1045 results for "Jewish Fiction"

Fatelessness

Imre Kertész
At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn't particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, You are no Jew. In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider. The genius of Imre Kertesz's unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg's dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he witnesses-or pretending that what he witnesses makes sense. Haunting, evocative, and all the more horrifying for its rigorous avoidance of sentiment, Fatelessness is a masterpiece in the traditions of Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski.
San Val 2004-08-01

The American

Howard Fast
About the Author In addition to the Immigrants novels, Howard Fast is the author of Greenwich, Being Red, My Glorious Brothers, Time and the Riddle, and Spartacus (the basis for the acclaimed film), among many other books. He has won numerous awards for his writing, including an Emmy Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Schomburg Award for Race Relations. Born in New York in 1914, he now lives in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated 1977 311 pages

The lawgiver

Wouk, Herman
For more than 50 years, Herman Wouk has dreamed of writing a novel about the life of Moses Finally, at the age of 96, he has found an ingeniously witty way to tell the tale of The Lawgiver, a romantic and suspenseful epistolary novel about a group of people trying to make a movie about Moses in the present day. At its centre is Margo Solovei, a brilliant young writer-director who has rejected her father's strict Jewish upbringing to pursue a career in the arts. When an Australian multi-billionaire promises to finance a movie about Moses, Margo does everything she can to land the job, including a reunion with her estranged first love, an influential lawyer with whom she has unfinished business.
Simon & Schuster 2013 234 pages

West and east: the war that came early

Turtledove, Harry
In 1938, two men held history in their hands. One was Adolf Hitler. The other was British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who, determined to avoid war at any cost, came to be known as “the great appeaser.” But Harry Turtledove, the unrivaled master of alternate history, has launched a gripping saga that springboards from a different fateful act: What if Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler? What would the Nazis’ next move have been? And how would the war—which Hitler had always regretted waiting eleven months to start—have unfolded and changed our world? Here, Turtledove takes us across a panorama of conflict fueled by ideology and demagoguery. Nations are pitted against nations, alliances are forged between old enemies, ordinary men and women are hurled into extraordinary life-and-death situations. In Japanese-controlled Singapore, an American marine falls in love with a Russian dance hall hostess, while around him are heard the first explosions of Chinese guerilla resistance. On the frontlines of war-ravaged rural France, a weary soldier perfects the art of using an enormous anti-tank gun as a sniper’s tool—while from Germany a killer is sent to hunt him down. And in the icy North Atlantic, a U-boat bearing an experimental device wreaks havoc on British shipping, setting the stage for a Nazi ground invasion of Denmark. From an American woman trapped in Germany who receives safe passage from Hitler himself to a Jewish family steeped in German culture and facing the hatred rising around them, from Japanese soldiers on the remote edge of Siberia to American volunteers in Spain, West and East is the story of a world held hostage by tyrants—Stalin, Hitler, Sanjuro—each holding on to power through lies and terror even in the face of treacherous plots from within. As armies clash, and as the brave, foolish, and true believers choose sides, new weapons are added to already deadly arsenals and new strategies are plotted to break a growing stalemate. But one question looms over the conflict from West to East: What will it take to bring America into this war?
Del Rey 2010 436 pages

A Stone for Danny Fisher

Harold Robbins
"A Stone for Danny Fisher" is an early masterpiece by Harold Robbins, who went on to become one of the most popular and most financially successful writers of all time. The early part of this book seems to be almost autobiographical, as Harold Robbins himself grew up as a poor Jewish boy who first went to work at age 15 to support his family and then held numerous low level jobs until he found his true calling as a millionaire writer and movie producer. A Stone for Danny Fischer is now most famous for being made into a 1958 movie starring Elvis Presley. The movie is entitled "King Carole" and all critics agree that this is by far the greatest acting performance by Elvis. Elvis has to play a complex and conflicted character, quite unlike the typical Elvis movies where Elvis sings while a bevy of girls swoon over him. Few novelists know the seamy side of New York as well as Harold Robins - the terror of the streets, the ways to make a shady buck by playing along with gamblers and mobsters, the unbridled lusts and passions of slum life. But his new hero does not start at the bottom. Instead, Danny Fischer, born into a family of modest means and respectability is gradually driven downward into the world of crime racketeering and poverty. His bitterness, his loneliness over the loss of the house in Brooklyn that was given to him for his eighth birthday, and his feud with his harsh father pull him one way, his natural decency and love for a sweet Italian girl, Nellie Petito, pull him another. Danny might have been one of the boys caught in the recent basketball scandal, though actually he is a boxer - a sensational amateur and potential champ. Later he becomes deeply involved in war time black markets and then in vending-machine rackets. Here Mr. Robbins reveals a little-known side of underworld life. But the driving force behind Danny's actions always is his sustaining love for Nellie. In a story that is harsh and yet tender, realistic and yet compassionate, Robbins reveals what makes the Danny Fishers what they are.
Ishi Press International 2011-12 426 pages

Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith

Gina Barkhordar Nahai
The first voice we hear in Gina B. Nahai's second novel is that of Lili, the grown daughter of a miraculous mother. When Lili was 5 and living in the Jewish ghetto of Tehran, her mother, Roxanna, "had grown wings, one night when the darkness was the color of her dreams, and flown into the star-studded night of Iran that claimed her." Thirteen years would pass, Lili informs us, before she would find her mother again. This short introduction serves as a framing device for the story of Roxanna's life, a life begun as a "bad-luck" child. According to her sister, Miriam the Moon, she "had been a runaway before she ever became a wife or a mother, before she came into existence or was even conceived."
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform 2015-02-24 382 pages

The thieves of Ostia

Lawrence, Caroline
Flavia Gemina is brilliant at finding things, so it's natural for her to solve mysteries. The daughter of a ship's captain living in Ostia, the port of Rome, in AD79, she acquires a gang of three friends who help her. There is Jonathan, the Jewish boy (and secretly a Christian) who has just moved in next door; Nubia, the African slave girl Flavia's father buys to save her from a terrible fate; and Lupus, a ragged homeless boy who is mysteriously mute. Together they work out who severed the heads of the watchdogs that guard people's homes, and why he did it. Caroline Lawrence, a first-time writer, is a terrific storyteller who creates a wonderfully vivid picture of daily life in the colourful, bustling port of Ostia while never labouring the historical detail. THE THIEVES OF OSTIA is first and foremost a whodunnit, with lots of excitement and plot twists.
Orion Children's 2001 195 pages

When we flew away: a novel of Anne Frank, before the diary

Hoffman, Alice
A beautiful novel exploring the little-known story of Anne Frank's life before she went into hiding - from bestselling, award-winning author Alice Hoffman and published in cooperation with the Anne Frank House. In soaring prose, bestselling author Alice Hoffman brings Anne Frank to life on the page, drawing from her extensive research in Europe and the United States, to depict her experiences from the moment the Nazis invade the Netherlands until her family is forced into hiding in the annex of her father's office building at 263 Prinsengracht, in Amsterdam. As state-sponsored discrimination turns ordinary people into monsters, the Jews of the Netherlands are caught in an inescapable swell of violence and hate, and Anne is shaped as both a young woman and as a writer who will change the world. WHEN WE FLEW AWAYfeatures archival content provided by the Anne Frank House, as well as information about Otto Frank's desperate bids to get his family to safety in America gathered from correspondence between Otto Frank and Nathan Straus, Jr., from the Straus Historical Society's Archives. A heart-wrenching exploration of Anne's life before the annex By New York Times bestselling author of The World We Knew, Alice Hoffman Featuring archival content provided by the Anne Frank House
Scholastic 2024-09-17 320 pages

Shylock Is My Name The Merchant of Venice Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

Howard Jacobson
The second book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series heralds the full-on 2016 anniversary celebration of Shakespeare: Man Booker Prize winner and our great chronicler of Jewish life retells the powerful, controversial story of Shylock. In The Merchant of Venice , the merchant Antonio borrows from the Jewish moneylender Shylock, whom he openly despises, to help fund his friend Bassanio's wooing of the beautiful, prized Portia. Shylock agrees--but on the condition that Antonio promise in return a pound of flesh should he be unable to repay the debt. When Antonio's ships are lost at sea and it becomes clear he cannot, the case goes to court: Antonio must honour his promise--until an unknown lawyer (Portia herself, dressed as a man) arrives and brilliantly picks the case apart. Jacobson takes the great tale of vengeance and cruelty and propels it through space and time to the shiny modern world of Cheshire's Golden Triangle, where we meet a funny, love-driven, vindictive cast of characters very much from our world, confronting Shakespeare's timelessly urgent questions in the 21st century.
Knopf Canada 2016-10-11 288 pages

Novels, 1956-1964

Bellow, Saul
Passionate, insightful, often funny, and exhibiting a linguistic richness few writers have equaled, the novels of Saul Bellow are among the defining achievements of postwar American literature. The Library of America volume Novels 1956–1964 opens with Seize the Day, a tightly wrought novella that, unfolding over the course of a single devastating day, explores the desperate predicament of the failed actor and salesman Tommy Wilhelm. The austere psychological portraiture of Seize the Day is followed by an altogether different book, Henderson the Rain King, the ebullient tale of the irresistible eccentric Eugene Henderson, best characterized by his primal mantra “I want! I want!” Beneath the novel’s comic surface lies an affecting parable of one man’s quest to know himself and come to terms with morality; like Don Quixote, Henderson is, as Bellow later described him, “an absurd seeker of high qualities.” Henderson’s irrepressible vitality is matched by that of Moses Herzog, the eponymous hero of Bellow’s best-selling 1964 novel. His wife having abandoned him for his best friend, Herzog is on the verge of mental collapse and has embarked on a furious letter-writing campaign as an outlet for his all-consuming rage. Bellow’s bravura performance in Herzog launched a new phase of his career, as literary acclaim was now joined by a receptive mass audience in America. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Library of America 2007 794 pages

That day the Rabbi left town

Kemelman, Harry
The head of the English department at Boston's Windermere College is murdered and there is no shortage of people who might have done it. Professor Malcom Kent, the victim, was a philanderer, a Peeping Tom and a snob. Rabbi David Small, professor of Judaica at the college investigates, drawn into the case because a suspect is a fellow rabbi. By the author of The Day the Rabbi Resigned.
Fawcett Columbine 1996 245 pages

The list: a novel

Fletcher, Martin
"Winner of a Jewish National Book Award for his previous book, Walking Israel, NBC Special Correspondent Martin Fletcher uses meticulous research and his own family's history in this stunning novel. Dramatizing explosive events in London and Palestine in the years directly following World War II, The List follows the lives of Edith and Georg, Austrian refugees who are expecting their first baby in a world unfriendly to Jews. Anti-Semitism sweeps across the streets of London even as the world learns of the atrocities of the Holocaust. As Edith and Georg desperately search for surviving family members, they struggle to stay afloat in a world riddled with terrorism, assassination attempts, and fear"--
Thomas Dunne 2011-10-11 338 pages

The Penitent

Joseph Bashevis Singer
From Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, The Penitent is a novella about Joseph Shapiro, a disillusioned and aimless Holocaust survivor. After his rapid climb to prosperity in the United States, he soon plunges into promiscuity and subsequently flees to Israel in order to find salvation - discovering a purpose to his life through the Jewish faith. Following his journey as he flees Nazi persecution in Poland in 1939, through wealth and a failed marriage in New York, and his entry into the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, the book charts Shapiro's transformation from worldly confusion to spiritual certainty in traditional Judaism. This powerful work is an examination of the nature of faith, the question of identity, and the notion of how to lead a good life.
Goodreads Press 2021-11-21 118 pages

The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah

Nora Raleigh Baskin
I put my fingers up to my throat and touched the pointy Star of David, my grandmother's necklace, a delicate chain made up of countless tiny links. If I wear this, will people think I am Jewish? Is that what I want to be? Seventh-grader Caroline Weeks has a Jewish mom and a non-Jewish dad. When Caroline's nana dies around the same time that Caroline's best friend, Rachel, is having her bat mitzvah, Caroline starts to become more interested in her Jewish identity.
Aladdin 2009-04-28 144 pages