Photo: Martyna Starosta

(JTA) — The New York Times Book Review published its “100 Notable Books of 2014” on its website Tuesday and, not surprisingly, given the whole People of the Book moniker, a number of the fiction and nonfiction books highlighted this year are of Jewish interest. (The number of Jewish authors on general topics was too numerous to count, so we didn’t.)

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

In particular, books by and about Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union made a strong showing on this year’s list: Anya Ulinich’s “Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel,” Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s “Panic in a Suitcase,” Boris Fishman’s “A Replacement Life” and Gary Shteyngart’s “Little Failure.”

Also on the list is another immigrant-themed book — Zachary Lazar’s “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” — a novel that features Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky and an Israeli poet’s murder.

Books about Nazis and the Holocaust feature prominently as well: The protagonist of Francine Prose’s novel, “Lovers at the Chameleon Club,” is a cross-dressing Nazi collaborator, while two nonfiction picks, “Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood” and “Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer,” also address the subject.

Those interested in more cheerful topics like aging parents and the Israeli-Arab conflict, can turn to Roz Chast’s graphic novel, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant” and “Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David.”

Or, of course, you could give up on the whole book thing and just tune in to Lifetime’s “The Red Tent,” based on the best-selling biblical novel by Anita Diamant.

Drawing The Last Chapter from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount