The Ministry of Special Cases Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Argentina: The Jewish community and the "Dirty War" and our BookBrowse Review of The Ministry of Special Cases.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About This Book

Kaddish Poznan grew up as an hijo de puta among the Jewish pimps, whores, and gangsters of Buenos Aires who called themselves the Society of the Benevolent Self. His mother was a prostitute, his father unknown, and to make a living he chisels the names off tombstones in the cemetery of the Benevolent Self for respectable Jews who no longer wish to be associated with their unsavory forebears. Although Kaddish likes to have his son, Pato, work with him, Pato wants nothing to do with his father’s business. As a university student, his studies have alienated him from his uneducated, ne’er-do-well father.

The story takes place in 1976 at the beginning of Argentina’s Dirty War, when General Jorge Videla’s military junta takes control of the country and young people suspected of leftist views begin to disappear. Kaddish burns some of Pato’s books—the books he thinks might get Pato into trouble—but misses a few. Pato is furious with his father’s intrusion, and in the midst of a violent argument between father and son, several policemen arrive and take Pato away. Pato’s disappearance throws Kaddish and Lillian, his wife, into a frenzy of grief and leads them into a waking nightmare as they make the rounds of police stations in their efforts to find out where their son is being held. Eventually they come up against the absurdist bureaucracy of the Ministry of Special Cases, the refuge of last resort. Here Kaddish and Lillian face all manner of human cruelty, corruption, and opportunism, and here they are each forced to come to terms with what they truly believe, and what they are capable of doing to get their son–or at least some shred of sanity–back again.

The Ministry of Special Cases is the story of a family living through Argentina’s darkest moment. In a world turned upside down, where the past and the future, the nature of truth itself, all take shape according to a corrupt government’s whims, one man—one spectacularly hopeless man—fights to overcome his history and his name, and, if for only once in his life, to put things right. Here again are all the marvelous qualities for which Englander’s first book was immediately beloved: his exuberant wit and invention, his cosmic sense of the absurd, his genius for balancing joyfulness and despair. Through the devastation of a single family, Englander captures, indelibly, the grief of a nation. The Ministry of Special Cases, like For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, is a celebration of our humanity, in all its weakness and its hope.

Reader's Guide

1. Kaddish is the only one of the children of the Society of the Benevolent Self—“a disgrace beyond measure for every Argentine Jew”—who is willing to acknowledge his heritage. Yet he makes his living from obliterating the names on tombstones in the sealed-off cemetery that contains his heritage. How does Kaddish see himself: as a servant of the truth and of history, or as an opportunist with no particular loyalties?
   


2. Why does Kaddish force Pato to work with him in the graveyard, and why does he force him to strike the chisel that will obliterate the name from the stone? As they drive home from the hospital Pato tells Kaddish, “You’re lazy. You’re a failure. You’ve kept us down. You embarrass us. You cut off my finger. You ruined my life.” The narrator goes on to refer to “the grand Jewish tradition of the dayeinu . . . And central to the form is the notion that each accusation, if that had been Kaddish’s only shortcoming, still it would have been enough” (p. 61). How complicated are Pato’s feelings for his father? Why does Kaddish so often make poor decisions?
   


3. The Ministry of Special Cases is rooted in Argentina’s history from the time of the Zvi Migdal—a criminal organization of Jewish gangsters who were active in Buenos Aires and ran the brothels—to the time of the military junta of 1976–1983, during which thousands of Argentine citizens, mostly young people, vanished without a trace. Do some research into this history, and discuss with your group how it affects your reading of the story.
   

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.