This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
The Latest
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Books A Murder Mystery In Little Palestine Brings Middle East to America
The fourth assassin: An Omar Yussef Mystery By Matt Beynon Rees Soho Crime, 336 pages, $24 When Omar Yussef arrives in Little Palestine – the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, neighborhood populated by Palestinian-Americans — the aging schoolteacher first finds a headless dead body in his son’s apartment, then watches his son get arrested by an overzealous…
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Books ‘Perfidious Albion’
Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England By Anthony Julius Oxford University Press, 864 pages, $45 A monumental study of English antisemitism proves an astonishing and controversial achievement. If nothing else, “Trials of the Diaspora” is an extraordinary testament to the brilliance of its author. That Anthony Julius, a top London lawyer…
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Books A 21st-Century Schlemiel
The Ask By Sam Lipsyte Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pages, $25 He is the anti-hero of the American Jewish novel: bright, only not bright enough; more dreamy than driven, and possessed by insatiable, often misappropriated desires. He does not see himself as beholden to his Jewishness, but neither can he escape it. He was…
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Books A Gangster Grows in Brooklyn
Somehow I missed this when it appeared in November, but Purim seems as good a time as any to catch up on a book whose title character (sort of) is named “Shushan Cats.” “The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats” is a novel by Hesh Kestin (previously the European bureau chief for Forbes), which takes place…
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Books A Graphic Account of the Israeli Countryside
The past year has seen a bumper crop of Jewish-themed graphic novels, with subjects ranging from the recent history of the Middle East (Joe Sacco’s “Footnotes in Gaza”) to the ancient mythology of the Middle East (R. Crumb’s “Genesis”) to the poets of the Beat Generation (Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor’s “The Beats”). Still, the…
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Books Cyril Kornbluth’s Postwar Dystopias
Readers of the intelligently edited anthologies “Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy & Science Fiction” and “More Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction,” both from Jewish Lights Publishing, are aware that the postwar development of the sci-fi genre was to a large extent a Yiddishe invention. Alongside…
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Books Jewish Impostors, Past and Present
Although Shabbetai Zevi naturally gets most of the attention, Jewish history has been marked by a series of impostors. On February 16, Bloomsbury USA publishes a collection by the late New Yorker reporter St. Clair McKelway, “Reporting at Wit’s End,” which includes the complete 1968 book “The Big Little Man from Brooklyn” about the Jewish…
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Books An Arabic Bestseller About Beirut’s Jews
A new book, documenting Lebanon’s largely vanished Jewish community is a bestseller — in Arabic. In fact, “Wad Abu Jamil,” a book by BBC journalist Nada Abdelsamad named after the formerly Jewish neighborhood in Beirut, is available only in Arabic, though translations into English and French are forthcoming. According to Alexandra Sandels of the LA…
Explore
Most Popular
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
In Case You Missed It
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Communications Stacey Bosworth selected as the Forward’s next Vice President of Development
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Film & TV On a new Israeli TV show, the secret lives of Orthodox Jewish atheists
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Fast Forward Feds charge man with organizing synagogue attacks in Europe and NYC on behalf of Iran
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Yiddish אַ שוועבנדיקע הילצערנע שיל בײַם ווענעציער ביענאַליי פֿון 2026 A floating wooden synagogue at the 2026 Venice Biennale
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעעס