Index: Literature

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NEW

Friedland’s There Was A Time For Everything (2023)

Book looks at Jewish taverns in Kingdom of Poland

Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey

Sledgehammer: An ambassadorial account of the Abraham Accords (book review)

The Most Tenacious of Minorities: The Jews of Italy

Three Minutes in Poland illuminates a lost world

Jordan Peterson offers ‘constructive wisdom’

Review: Sailor and Fiddler, by Herman Wouk (2016)

Nate Leipciger’s The Weight of Freedom (2016)

Immigrant Fiction from Brooklyn to Boston (2016)

Howard Jacobson offers post-apocalyptic tale in ‘J’ (2015)

Shteyngart as funny, self-deprecating ‘Little Failure’ (2015)

Empire of Deception: True-crime bio of Jewish swindler from 1920s (2015)

Review: Two Days in June, by Andrew Cohen (2014)

Review: Alison Pick’s Between Gods (2014)

Stefan Zweig’s ‘Impossible Exile’ (2014)

Review of Fields of Exile, by Nora Gold (2014)

Author Joshua Max Feldman on ‘Book of Jonah’ (2014)

Review: The Rise of Abraham Cahan, by Seth Lipsky (2014)

‘The Best Place on Earth’: Israeli-Canadian Writer Ayelet Tsabari (2014)

Motherless Child: gothic romance set in world of classical music (2013)

“David Levinsky:” Cahan’s classic novel of Jewish immigration (2013)

Review: A Bird’s Eye, by Cary Fagan (2013)

Review: Ride ’em Jewish Cowboy, by Hy Burstein (2005)

Review: Shirley Faessler’s ‘Basket of Apples’ — An Appreciation (2013)

Review: Joseph Anton, A Memoir, by Salman Rushdie (2013)

Book reviews: Holocaust memoir & near-future fiction (2013)

Review: The Book of Mischief, Steve Stern (2012)

Michael Chabon celebrates pop culture in Telegraph Avenue (2012)

Book reviews: a police procedural and a medical procedural (2012)

Yiddishkeit, a graphic celebration of Yiddish culture (2012)

Nine books celebrated at Canadian Jewish Book Awards (2012)

Great-granddaughter writes wonderful bio of Jacob Gordin 

Special: On Dickens’ Bicentenary: Toronto’s Dickens society in 1912

(Englander) New story collection from Nathan Englander 

(Rotberg) Publisher has strong ideological mission

NOVELS

On Graphic Novels

(various) Grace Paley, Ariel Dorfman, Thomas Keneally at IFOA

(various) Sherman, Wiseman, Michaels, Shrayer (for Chanukah)

(Howard Akler) The City Man

(Lisa Appignanesi) Losing the Dead

(Aharon Appelfeld) Age of Wonders

(Diane Armstrong) Mosaic, a Chronicle of Five Generations

(David Bezmozgis) The Free World

(Amy Bloom) Away

(Hy Burstein) Ride ’em Jewish Cowboy 

(Bonnie Burstow) The House on Lippincott

(Orly Castel-Bloom) Human Parts

(Michael Chabon) Telegraph Avenue

(Abraham Cahan) The Rise of David Levinsky

(Matt Cohen) Last Seen

(E.L. Doctorow) Homer and Langley

Profile: E. L. Doctorow

(Yehuda Elberg) Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

(Howard Engel) Memory Book

(Howard Engel) Detective Benny Cooperman turns 30

(Nomi Eve) The Family Orchard

(Cary Fagan) Three by Cary Fagan

(Cary Fagan) Valentine’s Fall

(Cary Fagan) A Bird’s Eye

(Joshua Max Feldman) The Book of Jonah

(Edna Ferber) Showboat

(Elyse Friedman) Then Again

(David Gibbins) Crusader Gold

(Susan Glickman) The Tale-Teller

(Gwethalyn Graham) Earth and High Heaven

(Gila Green) King of the Class

(Arnon Grunberg) Blue Monday

(Cynthia Holz) Two by Cynthia Holz

(David Homel) Midway

(Dara Horn) All Other Nights

(Dara Horn) In the Image

(Erica Jong) Inventing Memory

(Kathy Kacer) Hiding Edith, Gabi’s Dresser

(A. M. Klein) The Enduring Legacy of A. M. Klein

(Marianne Langner Zeitlin) Motherless Child: gothic romance in world of classical music

(Allan Levine) Allan Levine’s Jewish detective

(Olivia Lichenstein) Mrs. Zhivago of Queen’s Park

(David Liss) A Conspiracy of Paper, A Spectacle of Corruption

(Adam Mansbach) The End of the Jews

(Lily Poritz Miller) In a Pale Blue Light

(Margaret Mitchell) Gone but not forgotten

(Esther Kreitman) Dance of the Demons

(Robin McGrath) The Winterhouse

(Cynthia Ozick) Foreign Bodies

(Jacqueline Park) Mature writer Jacqueline Park scores with first novel

(Ian Pears) The Dream of Scipio

(Alison Pick) Far to Go

(Chaim Potok) Obit

(Edeet Ravel) Ten Thousand Lovers

(Norman Ravvin) The Joyful Child

(Michael Redhill) Consolation

(Eric Rill) The Innocent Traitor

(Jonathan Rosen) Eve’s Apple

(Stuart Ross) Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew

(Robert Rotenberg) Old City Hall

(Robert Rotenberg) Stray Bullets

(Jonathan Safran Foer) Two by Safran Foer

(Ami Sands Brodoff) Montreal novel wins Jewish Book Award

(Moacyr Scliar) Max and the Cats 

(about Walter Scott) The Origin of Ivanhoe’s Rebecca

(Nathan Shaham) Rosendorf Quartet

(Gary Shteyngart)  Super Sad True Love Story

(Simcha Simchovitch) Obit of an eminent Yiddish writer (2017)

(Evan Soloman) Crossing the Distance

(Steve Stern) The Frozen Rabbi

(Yuri Suhl) One Foot in America

(Richard Teleky) The Paris Years of Rosie Kamin

(Morley Torgov)  The War To End All Wars

(Karen Tulchinsky) Five Books of Moses Lapinsky

(about A.B. Yehoshua) Talking politics

STORIES

Not Quite Mainstream offers rich assortment (Ravvin, ed.)

Anthology: Contemporary Jewish writing in Canada

Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women

Radiant Days, Haunted Nights

(Montague Glass) The Potash and Perlmutter Stories

(Nathan Englander) Englander’s triumph

(Nathan Englander) What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

(Shirley Faessler) A Basket of Apples

(Bill Gladstone) The House of the Living

(Fannie Hurst) The Forgotten Fannie Hurst

(Norman Levine) The Ability to Forget

Bernard Malamud’s Collected Stories

(Avner Mandelman) Cuckoo

(Joan Oliver) Lines of Truth and Conversation

(Jonathan Papernick) There Is No Other

(Norman Ravvin) Ravin’ Over Ravvin: Sex, Skyscrapers and Standard Yiddish

(Chava Rosenfarb) Survivors

(Anzia Yezierska) The Bread Givers etc

 The tale of the missing wedding ring (Chosen Tales)

BIOGRAPHY, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS

Review: Joseph Anton, A Memoir, by Salman Rushdie

On Jewish Memoirs and Autobiography

Why They Left the Old Country

Biographies of I. B. Singer

Sholem Asch Reconsidered

(Mary Antin) The Promised Land

(Mary Berg) Mary Berg and the Warsaw Ghetto

(Harry Bernstein) The Invisible Wall

(Anthony Bianco) The Reichmanns

(Miriam Bassin Chinsky) The Tailor’s Daughter

(various) Uncommon Ground, Literary tribute to Matt Cohen

(Barney Danson) Not Bad For A Sergeant

(Catherine Dunphy) Morgentaler a difficult hero

(Yehuda Fine) Times Square Rabbi

(Gershwins/ Michael Feinstein) The Gershwins and Me

(Judith Friedland) There Was A Time For Everything

(Bill Gladstone) PUBLISH OR PERISH: How I Got The Rubinoff-Naftolin Family Saga into Print

(Jacob Gordin) Great-granddaughter writes wonderful bio of Jacob Gordin 

(Sondra Gotlieb) Dogs, Houses, Gardens, Food and Other Addictions

(Gluckel of Hamelyn) The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hamelyn 

(Nathan Hannover) Yeven Metzulah, The Abyss of Despair

(Benjamin Jacobs) The Dentist of Auschwitz

(Trudi Kanter) Some Girls, Some Hats, and Hitler

(Beth Kaplan) Jacob Gordin, the Jewish Shakespeare

(Jack Klajman) Out of the Ghetto (Holocaust memoir)

(Yehezkel Kotek) Journey to a 19th-Century Shtetl

(Arthur Kurzweil) On the Road with Rabbi Steinsaltz

(Aaron Lansky) Outwitting History

(Simon Louvish) Cecil B. DeMille and the Golden Calf

(Elaine Kalman Naves) Journey to Vaja

(Bernard Malamud) My Father Is A Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud

(William J. Mann) “Hello Gorgeous” — All about Barbra [Streisand]

(G. Marconi) Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World

(Ruth Mather) The Doctor’s Office: A Secretary’s Memoir

(Joan Mellen) Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett

(Ira Nadel) Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen

(Jeanette Nestel) There’s An Apple in My Freezer

(Ruth Panofsky) The Force of Vocation (about Adele Wiseman)

(George Perry, Richard Schickel) You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story

(Alison Pick) Between Gods

(Michael Posner) The Last Angry Man: Oral Biography of Mordecai Richler

(Nessa Rapoport) House on the River

(Mordecai Richler) The Last Angry Man: Oral Biography of Mordecai Richler

(Mordecai Richler) Obit: Mordecai Richler (1931-2001); & Tribute at IFOA (Oct. 2000)

(Samuel Romanelli) Moored in Morocco: tale of an 18th-century Jewish traveller

(David Roskies) Yiddishland

(Michael Ross with Jonathan Kay) My Life in the Mossad

(Ted Schmidt) Shabbos Goy

(Ian Scott) In Capra’s Shadow: The Life & Career of Screenwriter Robert Riskin 

(Rosalie Wise Sharp) An Improbable Life

(Neil Simon) Rewrites

(Anne Sinclair) My Grandfather’s Gallery: A Family Memoir of Art and War

(Kenneth Slawenski) J. D. Salinger: A Life 

(David Toback) The Journeys of David Toback

(David Vanek) Fulfillment

(William Weintraub) Getting Started: A Memoir of the 1950s

(Meyer Weisgal) So Far (autobiography, reviewed by Irving Abella)

(Kitty Wintrob) I’m Not Going Back: Wartime Memoir of a Child Evacuee

(Evelyn Wolfe) Stray Cats & Other Loves

(Hirsch Wolofsky) Through the Eyes of the Eagle

(Herman Wouk) Sailor and Fiddler

BIBLICAL & RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS

Kohelet is a knotty and naughty book

(Harold Bloom) Book of J

(Joel Hecker) Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah

(Arthur Kurzweil) On the Road with Rabbi Steinsaltz

(Andrew Sanders) Hanina My Son

(Adele Reinharz) “Why Ask My Name?” Anonymity and Identity in Biblical Narrative

(Ian Wilson) The Bible Is History

An appreciation of Solomon Schecter and the Cairo Genizah 

LITERARY ESSAYS & STUDIES

100 Great Jewish Books

The Dickens of the Jewish world  (about Sholem Aleichem)

Melech Grafstein and Sholem Aleichem

The model for Proust’s dandified Swann

I. B. Singer: Prolific Even in Death

The Jewish ghetto in literature

The sound of no hands clapping

The immortal Abraham Cahan

Grace Paley, Ariel Dorfman, Thomas Keneally at IFOA

(Greg Gatenby) Toronto: A Literary Guide

(Alfred Kazin) God and the American Writer

(Josh Lambert) Insightful guide to American Jewish fiction

(Cynthia Ozick) Quarrel and Quandary

(Norman Ravvin) House of Words

(Kenneth Sherman) Profile: Toronto poet-essayist Kenneth Sherman

(Kenneth Sherman) Void and Voice

(Ruth Wisse) The Jewish Canon

Ruth Wisse: a litterateur with political smarts

Zangwill’s ‘Melting Pot’ a Century Later

MORE NON-FICTION

Jordan Peterson offers ‘constructive wisdom’ (2019)

Ottawa prof wins Yad Vashem prize for Holocaust research (2014)

Hot Art: Knelman probes secret world of stolen art

Two books on the Jews of Montreal

Sherman, Wiseman, Michaels, Shrayer (for Chanukah)

The art of magazine profiles

How do I love thee, New Yorker? Let me count the ways

Spirit possession in Judaism (edited by Matt Goldish)

(Carolyn Abraham) The Juggler’s Children

(Nomi Berger) My Brother Peter

(Esther Delisle) The Traitor and the Jew

(Elaine Gruden Denholtz) The Zaddik

(Edmund de Waal) The Hare with Amber Eyes

(Etan Diamond) And I Will Dwell In Their Midst

(Annie Dillard) For the Time Being

(Bronwyn Drainie) My Jerusalem

(Simon Dubnow) History of the Jews of Poland and Russia

(Glenn Dynner) Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor & Life in the Kingdom of Poland

(Dr. Brian Goldman) The Night Shift: Real Life in the Heart of the E.R.

(Glenn Kurtz) Three Minutes in Poland illuminates a lost world

(David Kertzer) The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism

(Erik Larson) In the Garden of Beasts

(Eric Larson) Devil and the White City

(David Lehmann) A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs

(Nate Leipciger) The Weight of Freedom

(Dov Levin) The Litvaks

(Allan Levine) The Devil in Babylon

(Karen Levine) Hana’s Suitcase

(Daniel S. Levy) Two-Gun Cohen

(Daniel Mendelsohn) The Lost

(Mark Osbaldeston) Unbuilt Toronto 2: More of the City That Might Have Been

Paris wins prize for Long Shadows

(Raphael Patai) The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology

(N. N. Shneidman) The Three Tragic Heroes of the Vilnius Ghetto

(Abraham Shulman) Adventures of a Yiddish Lecturer

(Selma Stern) The Court Jew

(Janine Stingel) Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response

(Deborah Telushkin) A vivid portrait of I. B. Singer

(Gerald Tulchinsky) Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey

(Simon Winchester) A Crack in the Edge of the World

(Robert Zimmerman) Universe in A Mirror

MISCELLANEOUS 

(Alvin Abram) ADD fails to slow 67-year-old author (Gasner)

(Alvin Abram) Abram’s latest crime novel features hard-boiled cop (Gasner)

(Andrew Cohen) Canada’s influence in decline, writer asserts

Profile: author Norman Ravvin

Obit: Yiddish writer Yehuda Elberg

Profile: author-professor Martin Friedland

Chaim Grade letters find home in YIVO

The Strange Case of Ben Hecht

(Stanley M. Hordes) To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico

(Irving Howe) World of Our Fathers

(Arthur Kurzweil) From Generation to Generation

(Dow Marmur) On Being A Jew

(Genie Milgrom) My 15 Grandmothers

Obit: Chaim Potok

Obit: Henry Roth, author of Call It Sleep

A Remembrance of J. D. Salinger

(Erwin Schild) World Through My Window

Obit: Miriam Waddington

(Michael Wex) Born to Kvetch

More wit & wisdom from Michael Wex

Profile: Margie Wolfe of Second Story Press (2015)

 Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Hotel

 

POETRY

(Rafi Aaron) Surviving the Censor (about Osip Mandelstam)

(A. M. Klein) The Enduring Legacy of A. M. Klein

Profile: Poet Seymour Mayne

Mayne’s September Rain

Libby Scheier’s ‘seething inferno of words’

(Kenneth Sherman) Clusters, and The Well

Profile: Toronto poet-essayist Kenneth Sherman

(Esther Shor) Emma Lazarus: The New Colossus

Simchovitch’s Fiery Mountain

Obit: Simcha Simchovitch, eminent Yiddish writer (2017)

Yetta Sugarman’s Forms of Gone