Fiction
Good Girl Gone BadWednesday, May 22, 2013 by Margot Lurie | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Among the highlights from our archives is this reflection on Herman Wouk's "plucky, unlucky" heroine Marjorie Morningstar by former editor Margot Lurie, first published October 18, 2010.
Not-So-Young AdultThursday, April 25, 2013 by Diane Cole | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
With remarkable sensitivity and clarity, Israeli novelist Nava Semel portrays children in Mandate Palestine working as hard as they can to make sense of a post-Holocaust, pre-state limbo.
Shani Boianjiu and the Past and Present of Jewish LiteratureWednesday, March 20, 2013 by Melissa Weininger | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Israeli writer Shani Boianjiu's first novel, composed in English, is a rare contemporary addition to the Jewish tradition of transnational literature.
Life Goes OnMonday, February 4, 2013 by Jonathan Gondelman | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Life Goes On, by German-Jewish novelist Hans Keilson, had been forgotten since the Nazis banned it in 1934. Now, a year after Keilson's death, it has been translated into English.
Buczacz by Way of Newark: On Literary Lives at the EndThursday, January 10, 2013 by Jeffrey Saks | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Philip Roth has bowed out gracefully from the literary world. But for the great Hebrew writer S. Y. Agnon, retirement was never an option.
It’s All Happening at the ZooMonday, January 7, 2013 by D. G. Myers | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Howard Jacobson's latest novel, Zoo Time, is not immediately recognizable as Jewish fiction; but Jacobson again portrays the fear, uncertainty, and ambivalence that characterize the modern Jew.
2012: A Year in BooksWednesday, January 2, 2013 by D. G. Myers | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Books are dying—everyone says so—but you couldn’t prove it by the Jews. 2012 was a very good year for Jewish books: here are the best 40.
An Open Letter to Philip RothTuesday, November 20, 2012 by D.G. Myers | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Say it ain’t so. The news that you have decided to retire from the “awful field” of writing fiction is terribly upsetting. Not because your readers and critics might have paid more respectful attention to Nemesis if they’d only known that it was going to be your last book.
I. B. Singer’s Last LaughMonday, August 6, 2012 by David G. Roskies | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Like millions of his fellow immigrants to America, Isaac Bashevis Singer started over. In the beginning, he was a deadly serious Polish-Yiddish writer with world-literary ambitions.
The Artist in the Parking LotMonday, July 30, 2012 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
"Once upon a time in a kingdom, in a Middle Eastern democratic country, there was a watchman. The watchman sat for days on end in a booth, in the southern end of a pretty Mediterranean city, in a concrete parking lot . . ."
Editors' Picks
The Two Sauls Clive Sinclair, Times Literary Supplement. Like his biblical namesake, Saul Bellow became a monster in his dotage, according to his son's memoir. But in his writing, at least, Old Saul remained generous.
Kafka on Trial Susanne Klingenstein, Weekly Standard. Two new books show how, and how not, to approach the work of Franz Kafka, now that there is little original left to say.
Nabokov's Jews Benjamin Ivry, Forward. A sympathetic portrayer of Jews in his fiction, Vladimir Nabokov denounced anti-Semitism as "philistinism in all its phases" in both Russia and the United States.
Rehabilitating Fagin Charles Drazin, Jewish Chronicle. Charles Dickens regretted having associated Fagin's malice so closely with his being Jewish—which has forced modern adaptations to recast the Oliver Twist villain as a loveable rogue.
The Retrospective A B. Yehoshua, Jewish Fiction .net. "Do you no longer believe in a world of transcendence . . . so much so that you are mired in the mundane and the obvious? For example, in the film Potatoes . . . your main characters eat lunch for 16 minutes." (Fiction)
Zuckerman Abridged Max Ross, New Yorker. "The recent discovery of hundreds of notebooks and journals hidden throughout Zuckerman’s home in the Berkshires explains, at least in part, the seclusion and silence that marked his final 35 years." (Fiction)
Believing in the Novel J. L. Wall, First Things. Recently, author Paul Elie sounded the death knell for the "novel of belief." But did he overlook contemporary Jewish fiction?
Waiting for God to Call Steven Millhauser, New Yorker. "His father and Samuel, two of a kind. Samuel: 'Thou art wicked.' His father: 'You are ignorant.' A special sect: the Jewish atheist." (Fiction)
In Hemingway's Shadow Heather McRobie, Times Literary Supplement. Although recently overshadowed by her husband, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn was an esteemed writer in her own right—and an important Holocaust novelist.
Paradise Regained? D. G. Myers, Commonplace Blog. Francesca Segal's latest novel The Innocents, a reworking of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence for Jewish north-west London, substitutes tragedy for repentance and redemption.