Like Herta Müller, Leo Perutz (1882–1957) was a novelist born into a German-speaking milieu in Eastern Europe, although he was not a Romanian Catholic but a Jew from Prague. His books, writes Michael Weingrad, are “intricate puzzle-novels that contain mystery plots and paranormal elements, yet often borrow aspects of the historical novel.” Weingrad takes a close look at one of them:

By Night Under the Stone Bridge is mainly set in the Prague of Emperor Rudolf II in the last three decades of the 16th century and the first two of the 17th. This is the Prague of the labyrinthine and paranoid imperial court, and of the mystics, scientists, and charlatans who flocked there, from Johannes Kepler and Giordano Bruno to John Dee and Edward Kelley. It is the kabbalistic Prague of Rabbi Judah Loew, [the Maharal], and his legendary golem, and the Jewish Prague of the ghetto and the cemetery that has been a focus of the anti-Semitic imagination.

Perutz began working on By Night Under the Stone Bridge in the 1920s, but he did not complete it until the early 1950s, by which time he was living in Tel Aviv. His Austrian publisher was hesitant to publish a book with explicit Jewish content, and when it appeared in 1957—the year Perutz died—it made little impression.

To make sense of this work, Weingrad compares it to another historical novel by another German-Jewish writer of the same era, Lion Feuchtwanger’s Jud Süß, in which, Weingrad writes, Kabbalah represents

Jewish vitality, the possibility of a Jewish existence that is rooted in tradition, and might be given modern form in conditions of political freedom. . . . In By Night Under the Stone Bridge, by contrast, Perutz allows for an active Kabbalah, but not as something redemptive or a national project. Instead, Jewish magic is a dream in which the lethal pressures portrayed by Feuchtwanger are held in temporary abeyance.

In 2003, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, spooked by the American display of might in Iraq, decided to destroy or surrender his entire nuclear program. Informed observers have suggested that the deal he made with the U.S. should serve as a model for any agreement with Iran. Robert Joseph provides some useful background:

Gaddafi had convinced himself that Libya would be next on the U.S. target list after Iraq. There was no reason or need to threaten Libya with bombing as Gaddafi was quick to tell almost every visitor that he did not want to be Saddam Hussein. The images of Saddam being pulled from his spider hole . . . played on his mind.

President Bush’s goal was to have Libya serve as an alternative model to Iraq. Instead of war, proliferators would give up their nuclear programs in exchange for relief from economic and political sanctions.

Any outcome that permits Iran to enrich uranium at any level will fail the one standard that President Trump has established: Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Limiting enrichment even to low levels will allow Iran to break out of the agreement at any time, no matter what the agreement says.

Iran is not a normal government that observes the rules of international behavior or fair “dealmaking.” This is a regime that relies on regional terror and brutal repression of its citizens to stay in power. It has a long history of using negotiations to expand its nuclear program. Its negotiating tactics are clear: extend the negotiations as long as possible and meet any concession with more demands.