Doctorow, loosely based on the lives, trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Book of Daniel is a semi-historical novel by E. Since there are constant shifts in the points-of-view of the novel, the work echoes also this technique.Ī Reworking of the Biblical Book of Daniel in “The Book of Daniel” (Part 1 of 2) If it seems to you elementary, if it seems after all this time elementary…if it is elementary and seems to you at this late date to be pathetically elementary, like picking up some torn bits of cloth and tearing them again…If it is that elementary, then reader, I am reading you And together we may rend our clothes in mourning. The Rosenbergs were a couple with two sons the novel has the Isaacsons with a son and a daughter. This novel invokes major names of people and events from history intertwined with the fictional characters of the Isaacson family although these characters may have been inspired by the notorious Rosenberg Trial of twentieth-century America. The framing device is used narrative opens with the protagonist writing in the library…Some, if not all, stylistic characteristics of the novel are the following. The novel is quite difficult to read because of its multi-leveled meanings and of its non-linear plot. For the purposes of the summary, it is useful to consider the two timelines - the 60s and 50s - separately. The novel does not follow a logical, chronological progression, sometimes leaping from to the s multiple times within a given section. In some areas he has to piece together what he thinks his parents might have said or thought as he was not actually present. The untraditional narrative also includes letters, newspaper articles, historical scholarship, etc. Daniel leaps back and forth from contemporary to past events. Daniel is a graduate student at Columbia University in the narrative that unfolds in The Book of Daniel is actually his dissertation which he plans to submit to his advisor upon completion.
The Book of Daniel is narrated by Daniel Isaacson, the son of famed liberal parents who were executed by the American government on a conviction of espionage. A few days earlier, they had said goodbye to their children, Michael and Robert, who were 10 and six.
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were killed at sunset on 19 June, It was their 14th wedding anniversary.