[...] With Silberman, at the age of thirty-four, Lacretel becomes a novelist with his own personality. His subject, which has existed for centuries, is the Jewish problem, or more precisely the problem of a Jew living in a Christian society, the description of his fervent effort to assimilate with this society and his tragic failure.
The narrator is a young Protestant raised in Paris, a student at the Janson-de-Sagy high school, and there are many characteristics that make him resemble the author. Seven years later, in 1929, the narrator himself publishes a new story titled "The Return of Silberman" [...]
(From the book's preface)