The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples

An encyclopedia of the world, a collection of biblical parables, and Voltaire’s satire. The famous novel by Ilya Ehrenburg astonishingly accurately predicted the main catastrophes of the early 20th century.

The main character, Julio Jurenito, is a desperate hero of the Mexican civil war— a great provocateur, a scholar of dead languages, a philosopher-adventurer, and a preacher of “the last wisdom.” Like a biblical prophet, he travels the world with his students, attracting new followers, reflecting on various topics, and criticizing both the old order of the world and new ways of ruling.

This biblical tale of the 20th century, permeated with satire and philosophy, tells of the absurdity of any political system in every country without exception. In addition to fictional characters, the novel also features real historical figures: Mayakovsky, Picasso, Chaplin, Lenin. But above all, the novel shocks with the future world catastrophes precisely described by Ehrenburg.

“In a book that mixes mockery and prophecy, all ideologies and religions were condemned, and the Holocaust and Hiroshima were predicted. Ehrenburg foresaw the Nazis’ attack on the Soviet Union—his closeness to history was always bordering on telepathy,” — Richard Lurie, The NY Times

Interesting facts:

1. In the first edition, the novel was titled “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Students: Monsieur Del, Karl Schmidt, Mr. Koul, Aleksey Tishin, Ercole Bambuchi, Ilya Ehrenburg, and Nega Aisha, in the days of Peace, War and Revolution, in Paris, in Mexico, in Rome, in Senegal, in Kineshma, in Moscow and elsewhere, as well as various teacher’s judgments about pipes, death, love, freedom, playing chess, the Jewish tribe, and the construction—and much else besides.”

2. In the seventh student, the author presented himself in an biting self-caricature: “Ilya Ehrenburg, author of mediocre poems, a journalist who’s gone on paper-wasting, a coward, a renegade, a petty moralist, a nasty fellow with ideational, thoughtful eyes.” His biography includes randomly selected but real facts from the writer’s life.

3. In 2008, “Julio Jurenito” was included in the list of “100 Best Novels of All Time” by the editorial office of the Independent newspaper.