Soap bubbles

About this book

"Soap bubbles" by Max Simon Nordau is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. The pieces blend satire, travel-inflected sketches, and tender moral reflections, moving from comic cultural clashes to poignant meditations on faith, love, patriotism, and grief. Expect cosmopolitan settings, swift anecdotal setups, and humane, reflective endings.

The opening of the collection moves briskly across vignettes: a train-car exchange in “Cant and Humbug” pits Americans and an aloof Englishman against each other through dueling “true” anecdotes about national foibles; a salon debate in “Wife versus Native Land” leads to an Italian woman’s tale showing patriotism outmuscling romantic love. “Memories of Hungary” offers three sketches—a gentle portrait of Ali Hadji Effendi, a Persian dervish-poet peddler in Pest; the removal of a shabby street crucifix seen through the grief of an old woman; and the backstory of a luminous altar painting tied to a tragic, unspoken love. “A Christmas Eve in Paris” turns stark and intimate, as a father under siege burns last year’s Christmas tree to brew lifesaving tea for his feverish child. An essay-letter, “The Stepmother,” defends stepmothers against cruel stereotypes with clear-eyed empathy. The section closes by descending into the damp, gas-lit dissecting rooms of the Hôtel Dieu in “Pas de Chance!,” setting a grim, clinical stage for the tale to follow.