18 results for "Jewish Fiction"

How to find what you're not looking for

Hiranandani, Veera
"New historical fiction from a Newbery Honor-winning author about how middle schooler Ariel Goldberg's life changes when her big sister elopes following the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, and she's forced to grapple with both her family's prejudice and the antisemitism she experiences, as she defines her own beliefs. Twelve-year-old Ariel Goldberg's life feels like the moment after the final guest leaves the party. Her family's Jewish bakery runs into financial trouble, and her older sister has eloped with a young man from India following the Supreme Court decision that strikes down laws banning interracial marriage. As change becomes Ariel's only constant, she's left to hone something that will be with her always--her own voice."--
Kokila 2021-09-14 380 pages

Magical meet cute

Meltzer, Jean
"Is he the real deal... or did she truly summon a golem? Faye Kaplan used to be engaged. She also used to have a successful legal practice. But she much prefers her new life as a potter in Woodstock, New York. The only thing missing is the perfect guy. Not that she needs one. She's definitely happy alone. That is, until she finds her town papered with anti-Semitic flyers after yet another failed singles event at the synagogue. Desperate for comfort, Faye drunkenly turns to the only thing guaranteed to soothe her--pottery. A golem protector is just what her town needs... and adding all the little details to make him her ideal man can't hurt, right? When a seriously hot stranger mysteriously turns up the next day, Greg seems too good to be true--if you ignore the fact that Faye hit him with her bike. And that he subsequently lost his memory... But otherwise, the man checks Every. Single. Box. Causing Faye to wonder if Greg's sudden and spicy appearance might be anything but a coincidence"-- Back cover.
Mira 2024-08-27 390 pages

Reunion

Uhlman, Fred
"The romantic forested landscape of southwestern Germany in 1932 is the setting for the birth of a friendship that will haunt sixteen-year-old Hans Schwarz for the rest of his life. Hans is Jewish, the son of a middle-class doctor who is confident that the rise of the Nazis is only "a temporary illness" afflicting his beloved country. Hans's newest classmate, Count Konradin von Hohenfels, is a dazzling young aristocrat whose glamorous mother keeps a portrait of Hitler on her dresser. Hans is immediately drawn to Konradin, and thrilled when a close bond forms between the two boys, forged by common interests that set them apart from their classmates. But their loyalties are soon tested in ways they could not have imagined. Three decades later, from the vantage point of New York City, Hans once again confronts this life-shaping episode from his childhood, through a stunning revelation that he stumbles upon by chance. In its story of simple friendship undone by not-so-simple times, Reunion combines the explosive compression of a fable with the emotional depth of an epic novel many times its length. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times."--
Alfred A. Knopf 2022-11-01 74 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

Howl

Jacobson, Howard
In the aftermath of October 7, Ferdinand Draxler walks the streets of London in despair. Everything has changed - the sights, the sound, the spirit. He too is not who he was. Is he at the crossroads of history or is it just a bend in the cul-de-sac of his own gloomy nature? The son of a Holocaust survivor who accuses him of cowardice and the father of a daughter who sees him as complicit in genocide, Draxler fixates on bad news. He shouts at the television. He carries his own tin of paint to cover up graffiti. The staffroom at the primary school of which he is headmaster has become a battlefield of inflamed opinion he does nothing to quiet. His wife, Charmian, is a beacon of calm, but even she isn't sure she can save Ferdie from himself. 'Don't worry about me,' he tells her. 'I don't have what it takes to go mad.' -- Source other than Library of Congress.
Jonathan Cape 2026-03-03 294 pages

Novels and stories of the 1970s & 80s

Malamud, Bernard
"This capstone novel in Library of America's Bernard Malamud edition brings together his three final novels: The Tenants, about the growing tension between two male writers--one Jewish, the other Black--who are the only inhabitants of a crumbling Manhattan tenement house; Dubin's Lives, a revealing study in the perils and promise of love in middle age thought to be Malamud's most autobiographical work; and God's Grace, a postapocalyptic tale of upended evolution in which redemption depends on the lone human survivor's ability to find common ground with a talking chimp. Edited by Malamud's definitive biographer, the volume is rounded out with thirteen masterful short stories and the memoir 'Long Work, Short Life' as well as a fascinating autobiographic sketch, 'A Lost Bar-Mitzvah,' published here for the first time."--Dust jacket.
The Library of America 2023-03-28 899 pages

Radek: a novel

Heym, Stefan
"Through this dramatic history by Stefan Heym, we become intimate with the story of the maverick and internationalist Karl Radek, known as the editor of the newspaper of record throughout the Soviet era, Isvestia. Beginning as Lenin's companion at the dawning of the October Revolution, Radek later became Stalin's favorite intellectual - only to find himself entangled in the great purges of the late 1930s and scripting his own trial. In this, his last historical novel, Heym reveals Radek as a brilliant Bolshevik journalist and politician who found himself at every turn of the wheel of fate. A central figure of the communist world, Radek was such a controversial and perennially ambiguous personality that even his historical biography seems a work of fiction. With his thick glasses and most non-Aryan appearance, marked by what some might have seen as distinctively Jewish argumentative skills and humor, Radek's enormous talent as a writer, political acumen, and continuous curiosity carried him through event after event. In the struggles of the revolutionary movement Radek changed sides several times and came into conflict with Stalin, was exiled to Siberia, capitulated and resumed his editorial duties at Isvestia -- only to get caught up in the purge trials and sentenced to prison, where he died. As Heym sculpts credible conversations with Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Trotsky, Stalin, and many others (all seen from Radek's perspective) we come to know Radek as a man haunted by the fear that the insurgency will cease to move forward, living his life as a frenzied chase in pursuit of the continuation of the revolution, until the very end. Originally published in Munich in 1995, this first-ever English translation of Radek fashions the inner voice of a unique figure in the global revolutionary wave of the first half of the twentieth century"--
Monthly Review Press 2022 614 pages

The woman who wrote the Bible: a comedy of truly biblical proportions

Scliar, Moacyr
"Moacyr Scliar was the preeminent literary voice of the Jewish immigrant experience in modern Brazil. Now his most ambitiously satirical and irreverent novel is at last translated into English, offering not just a significant contribution to Latin American and Jewish literature but to world literature as well. In a past-life therapy session, a mysterious woman makes a remarkable breakthrough when she discovers that in a previous life she was one of King Solomon's seven hundred wives. In language that hilariously mixes modern jargon and biblical diction, she sets out to tell the story of her earlier incarnation three thousand years in the past, revealing how she went from a provincial nobody to a queen. Yet being royalty isn't all it's cracked up to be. As the least desirable of King Solomon's wives and concubines, she is unceremoniously discarded and forgotten in his harem. But as luck would have it, she possesses a unique gift: she is a woman who knows how to read and write. Once her talent is discovered, King Solomon charges her with writing what will become one of the most important texts in human history. Along the way our nameless narrator leverages her newfound status as royal scribe to bring about her own secret agenda. A brilliant feminist critique skewering the absurdities of patriarchy, The Woman Who Wrote the Bible is a comic masterpiece of truly biblical proportions"-- Provided by publisher.
University of New Mexico Press 2026-03-17 136 pages

Your comrade, Avreml Broide: a worker's life story

Gold, Ben
"Written in 1944 by Ben Gold, the president of the Furriers Union, this working-class, coming-of-age novel traces the family origin, immigration, and radicalization of an everyman named Avreml Broide. Mirroring Gold's own life, Avreml's story begins entangled in a complex intergenerational social and criminal community in Bessarabia just after the turn of the twentieth century. Personal dramas drive a young Avreml to New York City in his young adult years, where he finds a job in the fur industry and devotes himself entirely to his union, party, and the fight against fascism, often to the detriment of his personal life and relationships. Through strikes, dissidence, and finally on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, Avreml's journey presents the fascinating ambiguity of subsuming the self in service to party discipline... This novel offers a powerful counternarrative to histories and narratives of Jewish immigration that emphasize materialist American dreams and upward class mobility. Your Comrade, Avreml Broide offers an enticing mix of fact and fiction to demonstrate the personal risks, revolutionary dreams, and heartaches of Yiddish-speaking American Communists."--Publisher's description.
Wayne State University Press 2024 117 pages

Your comrade, Avreml Broide: a worker's life story

Gold, Ben
"Written in 1944 by Ben Gold, the president of the Furriers Union, this working-class, coming-of-age novel traces the family origin, immigration, and radicalization of an everyman named Avreml Broide. Mirroring Gold's own life, Avreml's story begins entangled in a complex intergenerational social and criminal community in Bessarabia just after the turn of the twentieth century. Personal dramas drive a young Avreml to New York City in his young adult years, where he finds a job in the fur industry and devotes himself entirely to his union, party, and the fight against fascism, often to the detriment of his personal life and relationships. Through strikes, dissidence, and finally on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, Avreml's journey presents the fascinating ambiguity of subsuming the self in service to party discipline... This novel offers a powerful counternarrative to histories and narratives of Jewish immigration that emphasize materialist American dreams and upward class mobility. Your Comrade, Avreml Broide offers an enticing mix of fact and fiction to demonstrate the personal risks, revolutionary dreams, and heartaches of Yiddish-speaking American Communists."--Publisher's description.
Wayne State University Press 2024 117 pages

Isaac's Torah: concerning the life of Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld through two world wars, three concentration camps, and five motherlands : a novel

Wagenstein, Angel
This novel is the saga in five parts of Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld, who grows up in Kolodetz, a small town near Lvov, which, when he's a boy, belongs to the Hapsburg Empire, but which subsequently belongs to Poland, Soviet Russia, Germany, and then Russia again. Isaac survives the absurdity and horror of Eastern Europe during the 20th century by pretending to be a fool. If this is an old Jewish art, then Isaac is a consummate artist. He plays the fool all his life, from his boyhood in Kolodetz shetl to the time when he is an accused war criminal in a Gulag in Siberia. Inseparable from Isaac's life and story are the Yiddish jokes and fables of Kolodetz. These and the counsel of his dear friend, the rabbi and chair of the atheist club in Kolodetz, Shmuel Ben David, sustain Isaac through two world wars, three concentration camps, and five motherlands. The book puts on record, with full art, what is perhaps the central story of the last one hundred years.
Other Press 2022 306 pages

They won't let you live

Blumenfeld, Simon
They Won't Let You Live is the story of two small shop-owners - one Christian, one Jewish - in 1930s London. Simon Blumenfeld's 4th and final novel, first published in 1939, critically revisits the themes evoked by Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice. Blumenfeld sets out to confound the reader's prejudices and expectations in a plot that does not shy away from the difficult and the disturbing. In an ever-growing atmosphere of violence in both public and private life, Blumenfeld explores how language that springs from our emotions and misapprehensions shapes our world and, indeed, how it appears to us.
London Books 2022 250 pages

Legends from Vamland

Colin, Vladimir
"Legends from Vamland is one of the most beautiful stories about human struggle against fear. The author blends together Romanian legends and myths with those of cultures throughout the world. One can hardly find any noble and beautiful human aspiration in all the cultures of the world whose reflection is not to be found in Legends from Vamland. The work is also intended to be one of science fiction, as the author provides the image of the spiritual life of an imaginary people from an imaginary land. The result is a book of splendid originality. One of the first Romanian writers of science fiction, Vladimir Colin was also an important representative of Jewish culture in Romania. Among his most important works of science fiction are Legends from Vamland, a work in many ways similar to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. These tales have been abridged and retold for English readers by Luiza Carol. Luiza Carol is associate editor of the international poetry magazine Voices Israel. She is an award-winning writer, poet, and translator and a member of the Federation of Israeli Writers and the Academy of American Poets"--
Center for Romanian Studies 2020-11-15 104 pages