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I remember nothing, and other reflections: and Other Reflections
By Nora Ephron. 2010
Continuing the lighthearted I Feel Bad about My Neck (DB 63378), screenwriter Ephron (b. 1941) discusses growing up with show-business…
parents, fantasizing about a potential inheritance, learning that no one likes her Christmas desserts, growing old, and dealing with her longtime memory problems. Bestseller. 2010In the days of sand and stars
By Francois Thisdale, Marlee Pinsker. 2006
Ten stories based on women from the Bible: Eve Naamah, Sarai, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Dina, and Yocheved. In "Rebecca…
Comes Home," a compassionate young woman's trip to the community well leads her to a husband. For grades 5-8. 2006Presents Wright's complete autobiography for the first time, combining his childhood in the South (Black Boy) with his life as…
an adult in the North (American Hunger). Also contains his 1953 novel (The Outsider), a literary chronology, and extensive notes. Sequel to Richard Wright: Early Works (DB 41552, BR 10299). Violence, some strong language, and some descriptions of sexDrunken Angel
By Alan Kaufman. 2011
Alan Kaufman recounts with unvarnished honesty the story of the alcoholism that took him to the brink of death, the…
PTSD that drove him to the edge of madness, and the love that brought him back. Son of a French Holocaust survivor, Kaufman was a drinker so mauled by his indulgences that it is a marvel that he hung on long enough to get into recovery. With his estranged daughter as inspiration, Kaufman cleaned himself up at age 40, taking full responsibility for nearly destroying himself, his work, and so many loved ones along the way. Kaufman minces no words as he looks back on a life pickled in self-pity, self-loathing, and guilt. Reading Drunken Angel is like watching an accident to see if any of the victims crawl away barely alive. Kaufman did, and here he delivers a lacerating, cautionary tale of a life wasted and reclaimed.Drunken Angel
By Alan Kaufman. 2011
Alan Kaufman recounts with unvarnished honesty the story of the alcoholism that took him to the brink of death, the…
PTSD that drove him to the edge of madness, and the love that brought him back. Son of a French Holocaust survivor, Kaufman was a drinker so mauled by his indulgences that it is a marvel that he hung on long enough to get into recovery. With his estranged daughter as inspiration, Kaufman cleaned himself up at age 40, taking full responsibility for nearly destroying himself, his work, and so many loved ones along the way. Kaufman minces no words as he looks back on a life pickled in self-pity, self-loathing, and guilt. Reading Drunken Angel is like watching an accident to see if any of the victims crawl away barely alive. Kaufman did, and here he delivers a lacerating, cautionary tale of a life wasted and reclaimed.Drunken Angel: A Memoir
By Alan Kaufman. 2011
Alan Kaufman has been compared to Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Hubert Selby Jr., even Ernest Hemmingway--his life reads so much…
like a great movie that the world of cinema has just optioned his first memoir, Jew Boy, for a feature film. Drunken Angel, his new autobiographical work, drops like a sledgehammer. It is the most gripping, chilling and inspiring account ever written of a life-long battle with alcoholism and the struggle to write. Graphic in its grit, an education in pain, Drunken Angel is being hailed as "the Naked Lunch of memoirs." The book chronicles Kaufman's headlong plunge into the piratical life of a literary drunk, and takes us shamelessly through noirish alleyways of S&M sensuality, forbidden pleasures and pitfalls of adultery, the thrilling horrors of war, plus raging poetry nights, mental illness, homelessness, literary struggle and his strange, magnificent rise into a sobriety of personal triumph as crazily improbable as the famous and notorious figures he meets along the way. Drunken Angel contains revealing portraits of such literary figures as Allen Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Barney Rosset, Anthony Burgess, Elie Wiesel, Ron Kolm, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jim Feast, Bernard Malamud, Hubert Selby Jr., Bob Holman, Sapphire, not to speak of the gutter dreamers, Nuyorican Poets, Unbearables, Babarians, Slammers, Black foot Indians, commandos, criminals, junkies, renegade cocktail waitresses, hoboes, painters, and a host of others who each in some way, big or small, play their part in peopling the wildly exilerating drama of Kaufman's passionate and exotic life. Whether the addiction be booze, women, violence, writing or fame, Kaufman honors us with an explicit honesty that only a writer of enormous power and artistic greatness can attain, and his life, as Drunken Angel poignantly shows, is a profoundly meaningful quest for truth and spiritual values.Aaron's Leap
By Craig Cravens, Magdaléna Platzová. 2014
"Told in clear and beautiful prose, Aaron's Leap is a deeply moving portrait of love, sacrifice, and the transformative power…
of art in a time of brutal uncertainty." -SIMON VAN BOOY, author of The Illusion of SeparatenessBased on the real-life story of Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Aaron's Leap is framed by the lens of a twenty first-century Israeli film crew delving into the extraordinary life of a woman who taught art to children in the Nazi transport camp of Terezín and died in Auschwitz. Aided by the granddaughter of one of the artist's pupils, the filmmakers begin to uncover buried secrets from a time when personal and artistic decisions became matters of life-and-death. Spanning a century of Central European history, the novel evokes the founding impulses, theories, and personalities of the European Modernist movement (with characters modeled after Oskar Kokoschka, Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel) and shows what it takes to grapple with a troubled history, "leap" into the unknown, and dare to be oneself.Magdaléna Platzová was raised in Prague and has lived in Washington, DC and New York City, where she taught literature at NYU, and now lives in Lyon, France. She is the author of a children's book, two collections of short stories, and three novels, including Aaron's Leap, a Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist, hailed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a novel that "must be counted among the best written by contemporary Czech writers." It is her first book to be published in English.The German Money
By Lev Raphael. 2003
"Lev Raphael is a daring writer--one who will not be -restrained by genre, but who tells his story with all…
the tools at his command. The German Money combines all of Raphael's estimable talents, delivering an emotional thriller about a totally believable contemporary family coming to terms with fifty years of silence."--Edmund WhiteBest known for Dancing on Tisha B'Av, the groundbreaking story collection exploring the lives of children of Holocaust survivors, Lev Raphael is also the author of five popular mysteries. Now he combines his talents in a story of emotional suspense.Paul has spent his life running--from New York, the city of his birth; from his beautiful beshert; from contact with his own siblings; but mostly from his mother, a Holocaust survivor of inexplicable coldness. Upon her mysterious death, the children face shocking questions. What caused her to die? Why did she divide their inheritance so that Paul, the least favorite son, was singled out to receive the most, the dreaded "German money,"a bequest of a million dollars accrued from German reparations to survivors . . . a gift as cynical as it is generous."Lev Raphael's new novel is a powerful, haunting and erotic tale. The stunning narrative builds to a shocking -denouement and kept me turning pages faster and faster to learn the truth."--Linda FairsteinLev Raphael is the author of thirteen books and known internationally as an insightful chronicler of the lives of the children of Holocaust survivors. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award, among many prizes, his short works have appeared in two dozen anthologies, including American Jewish Fiction: A Century of Stories. He is a book critic for National Public Radio and mysteries columnist for the Detroit Free Press.The Zone of Interest
By Martin Amis. 2014
From one of England's most renowned authors, an unforgettable new novel that provides a searing portrait of life--and, shockingly, love--in…
a concentration camp. Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favourite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn't show you your reflection. It showed you your soul--it showed you who you really were. The wizard couldn't look at it without turning away. The king couldn't look at it. The courtiers couldn't look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for 60 seconds without turning away. And no one could. The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting. Can love survive the mirror? Can we even meet each other's eye, after we have seen who we really are? In a novel powered by both wit and pathos, Martin Amis excavates the depths and contradictions of the human soul.The Department of Missing Persons: A Novel
By Ruth Zylberman. 2017
A startling debut novel about the burden of Holocaust memory and the implacable zest for life. Thirty-six years after her…
mother was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, the unnamed narrator lives a comfortable life in Paris. Her mother sees ghosts at every turn, longing to find the family that disappeared behind the miasma of the Holocaust, but she cannot reconcile her mother’s trauma to the cheery bustle of daily life that surrounds them. The pain of memories that are not hers haunt her, weighing all too heavily until she is incapacitated by them, unable forge her own future. As our narrator becomes further entrenched in the past, a letter is sent by the Department of Missing Persons suggesting that her grandfather is not dead, though details of his survival and current situation are unknown. Along with her mother, the narrator begins a desperate hunt, fighting through the past and present, love and loss, and her own vulnerabilities to find the truth and rid them both of their lingering ghosts.The City and the House: A Novel
By Natalia Ginzburg, Cynthia Zarin. 2019
A sophisticated new package for Natalia Ginzburg's classic fiction This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy from…
1939 to 1944, from the anxious months before the country entered the war, through the war years, to the Allied victory with its trailing wake of anxiety, disappointment, and grief.The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. The house is Le Margherite, a home where the sprawling cast of The City and the House is welcome. At the center of this lush epistolary novel is Lucrezia, mother of five and lover of many. Among her lovers-and perhaps the father of one of her children-is Giuseppe. After the sale of Le Margherite, the characters wander aimlessly as if in search of a lost paradise.What was once rooted, local, and specific has become general and common, a matter of strangers and of pointless arrivals and departures. And at the edge of the novel are people no longer able to form any sustained or sustaining relationships. Here, once again, Ginzburg pulls us through a thrilling and true exploration of the disintegration of family in modern society. She handles a host of characters with a deft touch and her typical impressionist hand, and offers a story full of humanity, passion, and keen perception.The Manzoni Family: A Novel
By Natalia Ginzburg. 2019
Winner of the Bagutta Prize, The Manzoni Family set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, captures the story of Alessandro…
Manzoni—celebrated Milanese nobleman, man of letters, and author of the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed)—and the women of his life. The dynastic tale begins with the matriarchal figure of Giulia, the mother whom the young Alessandro Manzoni found in Paris after she had abandoned him as an infant. Following her, there is Enrichetta, the woman he and his mother chose to be his wife, and the many children she had by him until her death; literary friends from the beau monde in Italy and Paris; and Alessandro's second wife, Teresa, and her children. Against the background of Napoleonic occupation, the reestablishment of Austrian hegemony, and the stirrings of the revolutionary urge for unification and independence, Ginzburg gracefully weaves the story of the Manzoni dynasty, a family that seems to grow autonomously around the life of the writer, effortlessly incorporating the epic tumult and emotion of the age. Ginzburg explores this fascinating true story and celebrated author with the elegance that has assured her rightful place among history’s acclaimed literary titans.A Foolish Virgin
By Ida Simons. 2014
It is the middle of the roaring twenties, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows…
are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish, and must submit to "the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families".After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daugher in tow. Much to her delight, Gittel makes the acquaintance of the well-to-do Mardell family, who allow her to practise on their Steinway. Gittel feels that she is taken seriously by Mr Mardell, the head of the household, and by thirty-year-old Lucie, whom she adores. When these friendships turn out to be nothing but an illusion, Gittel learns her first lessons about trust and betrayal. Her second comes soon after, when her father, whose talents for business leave much to be desired, attempts to make a quick killing in Berlin on the eve of the Wall Street Crash.Though this intimate portrayal of familial strife is set in the shadow of the Holocaust, Simons says little about the horror that awaits her characters, yet she succeeds in giving the reader the sense that the novel is about more than a young girl's loss of innocence. In a fluid, almost casual style, she has written a masterly and timeless ode to a relatively carefree interlude in a dark and dramatic period.Translated from the Dutch by Liz WatersMadeleine
By Euan Cameron. 2019
"Immersive, nuanced, impeccably researched" IAN RANKIN"Beautifully written and moving" ALLAN MASSIE"Poignant, nostalgic and redolent of the smell of France" SIMON…
BRETTFamily history has always been a mystery to Will Latymer. His father flatly refused to talk about it, and with no other relatives to consult, it seems that a mystery it shall always remain. Until of course, Will meets Ghislaine, his beautiful French cousin, in a chance encounter that introduces him to his grandmother, Madeleine, shut away in a quiet Breton manor with her memories and secrets.Before long, Will has been plunged headlong into the life of Madeleine's great love, his longlost grandfather, Henry Latymer. Reading Henry's old letters and diaries for the first time, Will discovers an idealistic young man, full of hopes and optimism - an optimism that will gradually be crushed as the realities of life under the Vichy regime become glaringly clear.But the more Will delves into Madeleine and Henry's past, and into France's troubled history, the darker the secrets he discovers become, and the more he has cause to wonder if sometimes, the past should remain buried.Madeleine
By Euan Cameron. 2019
"Immersive, nuanced, impeccably researched" IAN RANKIN"Beautifully written and moving" ALLAN MASSIE"Poignant, nostalgic and redolent of the smell of France" SIMON…
BRETTFamily history has always been a mystery to Will Latymer. His father flatly refused to talk about it, and with no other relatives to consult, it seems that a mystery it shall always remain. Until of course, Will meets Ghislaine, his beautiful French cousin, in a chance encounter that introduces him to his grandmother, Madeleine, shut away in a quiet Breton manor with her memories and secrets.Before long, Will has been plunged headlong into the life of Madeleine's great love, his longlost grandfather, Henry Latymer. Reading Henry's old letters and diaries for the first time, Will discovers an idealistic young man, full of hopes and optimism - an optimism that will gradually be crushed as the realities of life under the Vichy regime become glaringly clear.But the more Will delves into Madeleine and Henry's past, and into France's troubled history, the darker the secrets he discovers become, and the more he has cause to wonder if sometimes, the past should remain buried.Trieste: A Novel
By Dasa Drndic. 1975
Haya Tedeschi sits alone in Gorizia, in northeastern Italy, surrounded by a basket of photographs and newspaper clippings. Now an…
old woman, she waits to be reunited after sixty-two years with her son, fathered by an SS officer and stolen from her by the German authorities as part of Himmler's clandestine Lebensborn project. Haya reflects on her Catholicized Jewish family's experiences, dealing unsparingly with the massacre of Italian Jews in the concentration camps of Trieste. Her obsessive search for her son leads her to photographs, maps, and fragments of verse, to testimonies from the Nuremberg trials and interviews with second-generation Jews, and to eyewitness accounts of atrocities that took place on her doorstep. From this broad collage of material and memory arises the staggering chronicle of Nazi occupation in northern Italy. Written in immensely powerful language and employing a range of astonishing conceptual devices, Trieste is a novel like no other. Daša Drndić has produced a shattering contribution to the literature of twentieth-century history.Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust
By Jan Schwarz. 2015
After the Holocaust's near complete destruction of European Yiddish cultural centers, the Yiddish language was largely viewed as a remnant…
of the past, tragically eradicated in its prime. In Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust, Jan Schwarz reveals that, on the contrary, Yiddish culture in the two and a half decades after the Holocaust was in dynamic flux. Yiddish writers and cultural organizations maintained a staggering level of activity in fostering publications and performances, collecting archival and historical materials, and launching young literary talents. Schwarz traces the transition from the Old World to the New through the works of seven major Yiddish writers--including well-known figures (Isaac Bashevis Singer, Avrom Sutzkever, Yankev Glatshteyn, and Chaim Grade) and some who are less well known (Leib Rochman, Aaron Zeitlin, and Chava Rosenfarb). The first section, Ground Zero, presents writings forged by the crucible of ghettos and concentration camps in Vilna, Lodz, and Minsk-Mazowiecki. Subsequent sections, Transnational Ashkenaz and Yiddish Letters in New York, examine Yiddish culture behind the Iron Curtain, in Israel and the Americas. Two appendixes list Yiddish publications in the book series Dos poylishe yidntum (published in Buenos Aires, 1946-66) and offer transliterations of Yiddish quotes. Survivors and Exiles charts a transnational post-Holocaust network in which the conflicting trends of fragmentation and globalization provided a context for Yiddish literature and artworks of great originality. Schwarz includes a wealth of examples and illustrations from the works under discussion, as well as photographs of creators, making this volume not only a critical commentary on Yiddish culture but also an anthology of sorts. Readers interested in Yiddish studies, Holocaust studies, and modern Jewish studies will find Survivors and Exiles a compelling contribution to these fields.A History of Forgetting
By Caroline Adderson. 2001
Malcolm, an aging hairdresser, is reclusive and bitter. Alison, a salon apprentice, is dismissed by Malcolm for her embarrassing innocence.…
When their colleague is murdered by neo-Nazis, however, the two embark on an unplanned pilgrimage to Auschwitz. A moving and sharp-edged novel by the award-winning author of Ellen in Pieces.The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel (Plus Ser.)
By Paulo Coelho. 2010
Andalusian shepherd boy Santiago travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried…
in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within.Since its first printing The Alchemist has been translated into seventy-one languages and sold forty million copies worldwide, establishing itself as a modern classic that will enchant and inspire readers for generations to come. Beautifully rendered, The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel is a must have for any collector's library.Acclaimed illustrator Daniel Sampere brings Paulo Coelho's classic to new life in this gorgeously illustrated graphic novel adaptation.A View Across the Rooftops: An epic, heart-wrenching and gripping World War Two historical novel
By Suzanne Kelman. 2019
1941, Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. An unforgettable story of love, hope and betrayal, and a testament to the courage of humanity in…
history’s darkest days. University professor Josef Held has never recovered from the loss of his beloved wife – and has no intention of ever letting anyone new into his quiet, safe world. It is a world where the clock ticks steadily in his mathematics classroom, even as the sinister beat of Nazi soldiers’ boots threaten to drown it out. Terrified, Josef tries to keep his eyes on the ground as Jews across the city are forced into ghettos. But then Michael Blum, his most reluctant, infuriating pupil, tells Josef Jews like him will no longer be allowed to study at all. Josef can ignore the situation no longer. And, after the shock of seeing his neighbour killed on his own doorstep, he offers Michael a place to hide in an impulsive act of courage. Michael is everything Josef is not: spontaneous, poetic, and unafraid to love. Even though his passionate relationship with a Dutch girl is strictly forbidden – for he is Jewish, and she is not. Somehow, in the quiet gloom of the attic, Josef doesn’t mind things about Michael that annoyed him in the classroom, and a bond begins to grow. Remembering the pain of his own heartbreak, Josef is desperate to give Michael and his girlfriend a chance. He must go on as if nothing has changed: teaching his class, bowing to the Nazis. Beneath the fear, a thrill of defiance begins to bloom. But then Michael becomes perilously ill, and there is no way to get him the help he desperately needs. As the dark days of war continue, with danger and betrayal at every turn, no-one can be trusted. If Michael is to survive and get back to the woman he loves, it will be down to Josef – to find the hero inside himself, and do whatever it takes to keep Michael alive. Even if it means putting his own life on the line. A heartbreakingly beautiful story about love, trust, and courage against the odds, perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Lilac Girls, and The Nightingale. Readers are loving A View Across the Rooftops:‘Oh my goodness... Hauntingly beautiful… Incredibly powerful… I cried, I grieved and I hoped… I was left both heartbroken and satisfied.’ Robin Loves Reading ????? ‘Heart-wrenching… It is an emotional journey of heartache and love that will leave you in tears. One of the finest books I have ever read.’ NetGalley Reviewer ????? ‘I’ve read many books on WW2… but I’ve never read one like this before. Mesmerising, emotional and beautifully written.’ NetGalley Reviewer ????? ‘The rollercoaster of emotions I went through while reading this book is amazing… For an author to make me literally cry… The story is just incredible.’ Goodreads Reviewer ????? ‘If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would…