After Kristallnacht, a hunger artist confronts a splintering world
Largely ignored in its time, Ulrich Boschwitz’s 1939 novel “The Passenger” is a fascinating historical document.
As in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ small disasters foretell the destruction of a world
Yaniv Iczkovits’ prizewinning Israeli novel, “The Slaughterman’s Daughter,” takes its place among the classics of Jewish literature.
Digging into Holocaust history and finding a sort of gold
In ‘Plunder,’ Menachem Kaiser distrusts and deconstructs the third-generation Holocaust memoir.
Who murdered a Nazi fugitive — and does the answer actually matter?
In “The Ratline,” author and documentarian Philippe Sands probes the life and death of Otto Gustav von Wächter.
In Jerusalem, where lives intersect thrillingly — and sometimes violently
Rebecca Sacks’ ambitious debut novel ‘City of a Thousand Gates’ features a cast of 32 Israelis and Palestinians.
Long after the Kindertransport, the trauma remained
Jonathan Lichtenstein’s memoir “The Berlin Shadow” argues that the legacy of the Kindertransport rippled through the next generations.
After the Holocaust, displaced by indifference and paralysis
In David Nasaw’s “The Last Million,” the plight of Jewish refugees in DP camps offers a warning about the troubling aftermath of war.
Who would marry a Nazi leader — and why?
James Wyllie’s “Nazi Wives” examines Magda Goebbels, Emmy Goering and other “women at the top of Hitler’s Germany.”
Imagine, if you will, a sort of Yiddish ‘Brigadoon’
Max Gross has written a fantasy, but also an indictment of human fallibility, modernity, and the troubled relationship between Jews and gentiles.
An extraordinary yearning to understand a father’s life
A Polish Jewish immigrant from a large Hasidic clan in Warsaw, Eli Tannen led a sometimes difficult, decidedly nonlinear life.