Book picks similar to
The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl by Sholom Aleichem
fiction
russian
jewish
russian-and-eastern-europe-lit
Address Unknown
Kathrine Kressmann Taylor - 1938
Published in book form a year later and banned in Nazi Germany, it garnered high praise in the United States and much of Europe. A series of fictional letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany, Address Unknown is a haunting tale of enormous and enduring impact.
Joshua: A Brooklyn Tale
Andrew Kane - 2011
Over the years their bond intensifies, though their lives diverge. Rachel aspires to be a doctor, a blasphemous choice for a woman in her culture. Joshua kills a man in self defense, and is alienated from his own community. Paul leaves his home to find solace in the Hasidic enclave of Crown Heights.From different worlds and unaware they share a father, Joshua and Paul see their lives collide in a quest for Rachel's love. Through these and other challenges, culminating with the 1991 Crown Heights riots, this story explores the tensions between two communities in close physical proximity, but still worlds apart. Through Joshua, Rachel, and Paul, a vision of hope is offered, but tempered by the realities of human frailty and tragedy.
A Big Storm Knocked It Over
Laurie Colwin - 1993
At once a hilarious social commentary and an insightful, sophisticated modern romance, A Big Storm Knocked It Over stands as a living tribute to one of contemporary fiction’s most original voices.
We Run Bad
John Curry - 2018
After abandoning his new home as a lost cause, he's caught up in the poker craze and moves to Atlantic City with a new dream of "playing poker for a living", but soon finds himself stuck in a dizzying spell of bad luck at the card tables. Or maybe he just sucks at poker, like everybody else. His money all gone, and finding that it's actually difficult to drink oneself to death at 1am, he's suddenly offered a chance to make his money back, and then some, by running an underground poker game in New York City. Once in New York, Tim finds himself on the road to recovery and making real money for the first time—but at what cost? We Run Bad offers an authentic and darkly comic look at underground poker culture, while serving up an indictment of post-recession America. Here, every game is rigged, and the only way to come out ahead is to be the one doing the rigging.
Humans: An A to Z
Matt Haig - 2014
DO YOUA) Know a human?B) Love a human?C) Have trouble dealing with humans?IF YOU'VE ANSWERED YES TO ANY OF THE ABOVE, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOUWhether you are planning a high level of human interaction or just a casual visit to the planet, this user-guide to the human race will help you translate their sayings, understand exotic concepts such as 'democracy' and 'sofas', and make sense of their habits and bizarre customs.A phrase book, a dictionary and a survival guide, this book unravels all the oddness, idiosyncrasies and wonder of the species, allowing everyone to make the most of their time on Earth.
Tales Around the Jack O'Lantern III: A Mary O'Reilly Short Story
Terri Reid - 2016
Join the O'Reilly family once again as they meet around the Jack O'Lantern on Halloween night and share ghost stories that will make you shiver and have you looking over your shoulder to see if there is "a little something extra" wandering through your home tonight.
The Anthropocene Reviewed
John GreenJohn Green - 2021
In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.
Modern Girls
Jennifer S. Brown - 2016
In 1935, Dottie Krasinsky is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in Midtown Manhattan, Dottie steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions. Yet at heart, she is a dutiful daughter, living with her Yiddish-speaking parents on the Lower East Side. So when, after a single careless night, she finds herself in a family way by a charismatic but unsuitable man, she is desperate: unwed, unsure, and running out of options. After the birth of five children—and twenty years as a housewife—Dottie’s immigrant mother, Rose, is itching to return to the social activism she embraced as a young woman. With strikes and breadlines at home and National Socialism rising in Europe, there is much more important work to do than cooking and cleaning. So when she realizes that she, too, is pregnant, she struggles to reconcile her longings with her faith. As mother and daughter wrestle with unthinkable choices, they are forced to confront their beliefs, the changing world, and the fact that their lives will never again be the same….
I Am Forbidden
Anouk Markovits - 2012
Five years later, Josef rescues a young girl, Mila, after her parents are killed while running to meet the Rebbe they hoped would save them. Josef helps Mila reach Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community, in whose home Mila is raised as a sister to Zalman’s daughter, Atara. As the two girls mature, Mila’s faith intensifies, while her beloved sister Atara discovers a world of books and learning that she cannot ignore. With the rise of communism in central Europe, the family moves to Paris, to the Marais, where Zalman tries to raise his children apart from the city in which they live. When the two girls come of age, Mila marries within the faith, while Atara continues to question fundamentalist doctrine. The different choices the two sisters makes force them apart until a dangerous secret threatens to banish them from the only community they’ve ever known. A beautifully crafted, emotionally gripping story of what happens when unwavering love, unyielding law, and centuries of tradition collide, I Am Forbidden announces the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new voice and opens a startling window on a world long closed to most of us, until now.
Book of Mercy
Leonard Cohen - 1984
Now beautifully repackaged, the poems in Book of Mercy brim with praise, despair, anger, doubt and trust. Speaking from the heart of the modern world, yet in tones that resonate with an older devotional tradition, these verses give voice to our deepest, most powerful intuitions.
Barney's Version
Mordecai Richler - 1997
Life was absurd, and nobody truly understood anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a 'wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence and probably a murderer'. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting and plagiarising, as his memory plays tricks on him - and on the reader. Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off 3 wives - the enigmatic Clara, whom he drove to suicide in Paris in 1952; the garrulous Second Mrs Panofsky; and finally Miriam who stayed married to him for decades before running off with a sober academic. Houdini-like, Barney slides from crisis to success, from lowlife to highlife in Montreal, Paris and London, his outrageous expolits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback - the murder charge that he goes on denying to the end.
Uncle's Dream
Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1859
Yet with many rivals for the hands of both parties, events are not guaranteed to run smoothly. The gossiping and rumor of the country village are deftly captured in Dostoevsky's mock-heroic tone. A rare foray into comedy by the giant of Russian literature, this tale nonetheless still possesses all the hallmarks of Dostoevsky's psychological and philosophical writing.
The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China
Jonathan Kaufman - 2020
They kept up their intrigues and opium smuggling while helping to rescue 18,000 Jews from Hitler's Europe, and though they soon faced the tsunami that was communism, their legacy remains today.