690 results for "Jewish Fiction"

The Devil in Jerusalem

Naomi Ragen
Daniella Goodman has lived her life in search of religious fulfillment. Steeped in Jewish teachings at a prestigious day school and an Orthodox summer camp, she finds herself far too busy with pre-med studies at the University of Pennsylvania to seek out religiously like-minded friends. Until she meets Steven, a devout Jewish scholar who prefers to be called "Shlomie." His religious interests skew toward the mystical and fanatical, and Daniella soon finds herself wrapped up in Shlomie's enthusiasm. Before long, she and Shlomie move to Israel to start a family and to further their religious education. Isolated from their friends and families and blinded by their quest for piety, Daniella, Shlomie, and their growing family become a target for one of Israel's most abusive, horrifying cults. Detective Bina Tzedek is tasked with unraveling the threads of pain, prayer, and prophecy in the most difficult case of her career. Ragen draws on the tactics of cult leaders and on victim testimony to craft this exploration of religious fanaticism, weaving togethervicious description of abuse and the Goodmans' higher-minded desires for purity.
Thorndike Press 2016 527 pages

Jacob the liar

Becker, Jurek
Acclaimed as the most remarkable novel of the Holocaust ever written in Germany, Jacob the Liar breaks with the genre's tradition of unremitting realism to offer a suspenseful and masterfully crafted tale of hope, desire, and the life-giving force of fiction. In the ghetto, the possession of a radio is punishable by death. Like thousands of his fellow prisoners, Jacob Heym is cut off from all news of the war - until he is arrested one evening and brought to the German military office, where he overhears a broadcast report of the Red Army's advance to a city some 300 miles away. Miraculously, he is allowed to return to his quarters, but when he tries to spread the good news, he discovers the only way to make people believe him is to tell a lie: "How do I know? I have a radio!" Inevitably, one lie leads to another, and before long Jacob finds himself feeding the entire ghetto fabricated reports of the Russians' advance - reports that save lives when, under the shock of renewed hope, suicides cease and the people of the ghetto take heart. Jacob is a hero and a liar. But how long can his web of lies hold? Here for the first time is Leila Vennewitz's authorized translation of this classic novel, which won the Heinrich Mann Prize for fiction and Switzerland's Charles Veillon Award.
Penguin 1990 244 pages

Mr. Perfect on paper: a novel

Meltzer, Jean
"As the creator and CEO of the popular Jewish dating app J-Mate, matchmaker Dara Rabinowitz knows the formula for lasting love--at least, for everyone else. When it comes to her own love life, she's been idling indefinitely. Until her beloved bubbe shares Dara's checklist for "The Perfect Jewish Husband" on national television and charming news anchor Chris Steadfast proposes they turn Dara's search into must-see TV. As a non-Jewish single dad, Chris doesn't check any of Dara's boxes. But her hunt for Mr. Perfect is the ratings boost his show desperately needs. If only Chris could ignore his own pesky attraction to Dara--a task much easier said than done when Dara starts questioning if "perfect on paper" can compete with how hard she's falling for Chris"--
Mira 2022 399 pages

The Nazi and the barber

Hilsenrath, Edgar
Berlin was still a heap of ruins. ... One day they would rebuild the city again. I could see the day coming. And the rest of Germany, too. Yes. They would rebuild everything again. All Germany. And then ... yes ... perhaps they will bring back the Fuhrer from heaven. The Nazi and The Barber is the famous story about the Nazi mass-murderer Max Schulz who after the war hides himself by assuming a Jewish identity. You will never forget this book. Written by the well-known German-Jewish author Edgar Hilsenrath. "
Barber Press 2013 409 pages

The Free World

Bezmozgis, David
Welcome to Rome. It is the summer of 1978, and the Krasnansky family, bickering, tired and confused, are supposed to be passing through. Alongside thousands of other Soviet Jewish refugees – among them criminals, dissidents and refuseniks – they await passage to their new homes in the West. But escaping Communism is not so easy, especially when some of the Krasnanskys insist on bringing it with them, and even more so when their sponsor in the USA lets them down and they find that they’re no longer passing through at all. On the contrary, they’re stuck.Welcome, then, to the waiting room of your life, and to a tragic but comic tale of reckless brothers and long-suffering sisters, ailing parents and innocent children, of love affairs and criminal liaisons, of a wonderfully troubled family and a perpetually wandering people, and their epic search for a home: somewhere, anywhere – or Canada, as it turns out.The Free World is the glorious debut novel by David Bezmozgis, whose collection of stories was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and who was recently included in the New Yorker’s prestigious ‘20 under 40’ list.
HarperCollins Canada, Limited 2011-01-01 356 pages

Fat Chance

Lesléa Newman
Judi Liebowitz thinks she's fat. And she's convinced, as she confides in her diary, that she'd be happier if she were skinnier. So when Judi becomes friendly with pencil-thin, glamorous Nancy Pratt, she learns Nancy's secret and joins her in the secret binge-and-purge cycles of bulimia. Before long, Judi's life spins out of control and her obsession with food, calories, and pounds is no longer another typical eighth-grade problem--it's a matter of life and death.
PaperStar Books 1996 214 pages

Mercy of a rude stream

Roth, Henry
Mercy of a Rude Stream marks the astonishing return of Henry Roth, sixty years after the publication of his classic novel Call it Sleep . A book of time, memory, and desire, this new novel is set in the New York of World War I: a colorful vibrant, carelessly brutal city where an immigrant boy, Ira Stigmanm is coming of age. Like Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, Ira begins to discover the genius and the burden of his imagination, as he takes his first tentative steps toward adulthood. A contempoary of the great modernist writers, Roth is being rediscovered by a new generation of readers.
St. Martin's Press 1994 290 pages

The Devil's Company

David Liss
From the acclaimed author of The Whiskey Rebels and A Conspiracy of Paper comes a superb new historical thriller set in the splendor and squalor of eighteenth-century London. In Benjamin Weaver, David Liss has created one of fiction's most enthralling characters. The year is 1722. Ruffian for hire, ex-boxer, and master of disguise, Weaver finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, pitted against Jerome Cobb, a wealthy and mysterious schemer who needs Weaver's strength and guile for his own treacherous plans. Weaver is blackmailed into stealing documents from England's most heavily guarded estate, the headquarters of the ruthless British East India Company, but the theft of corporate secrets is only the first move in a daring conspiracy within the eighteenth century's most powerful corporation. To save his friends and family from Cobb's reach, Weaver must infiltrate the Company, navigate its warring factions, and uncover a secret plot of corporate rivals, foreign spies, and government operatives. With millions of pounds and the security of the nation at stake, Weaver will find himself in a labyrinth of hidden agendas, daring enemies, and unexpected allies. With the explosive action and scrupulous period research that are David Liss's trademarks, The Devil's Company, depicting the birth of the modern corporation, is the most impressive achievement yet from an author who continues to set ever higher standards for historical suspense.
Thorndike Press 2009 703 pages

Tell me a riddle

Olsen, Tillie
“Tell Me a Riddle” renders an unforgettable portrait of a working class couple when the gender determined differences in their experiences of poverty and familial life give rise to bitter conflict after almost four decades of marriage. As she dies from cancer, Eva, the protagonist, recollects a revolutionary past that both critiques and offers hope for the present. Deborah Rosenfelt’s introduction and the essays in this volume survey the critical reception of this highly acclaimed story, analyze its biographical and historical contexts, examine the text’s language, structure, spiritual and moral significance, and illuminate Olsen’s relationship to the American midwest, the American left, and the Jewish enlightenment tradition. This casebook includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of Olsen’s life, an authoritative text of “Tell Me a Riddle,” relevant essays by Olsen, seven critical essays, and a bibliography. The contributors are: Joanne Trautmann Banks, Constance Coiner, Rachel Blau Duplessis, Mara Faulkner, Elaine Orr, Linda Ray Pratt, and Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt.
Rutgers University Press 1995-05-01 310 pages

Sabbath's theater

Roth, Philip
Mickey Sabbath (modeled after American Jewish painter R.B. Kitaj[2]) is an unproductive, out-of-work, former puppeteer with a strong affinity for prostitutes, adultery, and the casual sexual encounter. Sabbath takes great pleasure in his status as the prototypical "dirty old man." He takes an equal pleasure in manipulating the people around him, primarily women—in a sense, they play the same role as his puppets. The loss of a decades-long wingman—the equally depraved Drenka—precipitates a crisis in a life he has long considered an utter failure. Sabbath wonders whether he should simply take his own life, thereby heeding the advice of the ghost of his departed mother, a frequent visitor who urges suicide as the fitting end for his failed life.
Houghton Mifflin 1995-01 451 pages

Promised land: a novel

Fletcher, Martin
"The tumultuous early years of the young Jewish state are brought to vivid life through the eyes of two German Jewish brothers. Arie survived the Holocaust in Europe. Peter, one year older, was sent to America before the war began. They find each other again in Israel, learning everyone else in their family has been murdered. Peter becomes a top Mossad agent, deeply involved in many of the key spy adventures of the era. Arie becomes a scheming businessman, among the richest men in Israel: one brother is building the state, the other protecting it. But they have fallen in love with the same woman, a Jewish refugee from Egypt. The brothers' jealousies and intrigues are mirrored by the young nation's very own struggles to survive"--
Thomas Dunne Books 2018 409 pages

The Gates of the Forest

Elie Wiesel
Gregor?a teenaged boy, the lone survivor of his family?is hiding from the Germans in the forest. He hides in a cave, where he meets a mysterious stranger who saves his life. He hides in the village, posing as a deaf-mute peasant boy. He hides among the partisans of the Jewish resistance. But where, he asks, is God hiding? And where can one find redemption in a world that God has abandoned? In a story punctuated by friendship and fear, sacrifice and betrayal, Gregor's wartime wanderings take us deep into the ghost-filled inner world of the survivor.
Henry Holt 1996-12 226 pages

Collected stories

Ozick, Cynthia
Masterly collection of short stories by an American novelist at the height of her powers. It is the stories upon which Cynthia Ozick's literary reputation rests. She writes about bitterness, cruelty and compulsion with brutal acuity and tenderness. She has created a timeless collection in which Greek mythology, superstition and the religious and cultural experience of the Jewish diaspora in America collide. The Pagan Rabbi is seduced by a tree sprite after seeing his daughter rescued from drowning by a water sprite. Such ecstasy is not permitted to mortals and so the scholar must die. He hangs himself with his prayer shawl as he watches the strangely beautiful nymph decay. In Envy, a Yiddish poet who watches the success of a contemporary, becomes very like a character in an I.B. Singer story entrapped by his anguish and haunted by the memory of a child. In the Doctor's Wife, the most gentle of the stories, a poor doctor not unlike Chekhov endures family life in which he is adored by his three sisters and oppressed by his family obligations. In these stories, we see Ozick defining herself and her literary territory. The stories may be read purely as evocations of Jewish experience, where time seems to have by-passed these characters. In the Butterfly and the Traffic Light, Jerusalem is seen upon a hill as only it can be in legend, and America is said not to have cities scarred by battles. This is a dazzling collection of short stories by an internationally celebrated novelist.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2021 484 pages

Where the bird sings best

Jodorowsky, Alejandro
In this wildly imaginative, powerfully moving, "psychomagical" autobiography-cum-novel, Alejandro Jodorowsky tells the story of how his Ukrainian Jewish grandfather, his fiery wife, Teresa, and their four children moved to Chile under fake passports and assumed Christian identities, with only a half-kopek to their name and no idea how they'd forge their new lives. His book is a visionary family saga filled with ancestors both mythical and real including bee-covered relatives, women who commune with wolves, snake charmers, and militant anarchists. Where the Bird Sings Best owes its title to Jean Cocteau's reflection: "A bird sings best on its family tree."
Restless Books 2015 386 pages