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 National Jewish Book Award Winners Announced
The National Jewish Book Award winners were announced Wednesday and there’s good cause for excitement. From an illustrated children’s bible to a gripping young adult novel based on the voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, here are the list of winning books: Jewish Book of the Year Award “Louis D. Brandeis: A Life,” by Melvin…
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Books Books Aren’t Born: Writing and Gestating Just Aren’t Comparable
My son, Shai, was born on January 21, 2007 and two days later, in time for our arrival home from the hospital, a heavy cardboard box arrived in the mail. University of Nebraska Press had sent me 20 copies of my first book, “Houses Of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books,” which I had been…
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Books An Actor Exits
The Humbling By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 160 pages, $22. Imminence of the end concentrates the craft. German critics employ the term Altersstill — late style — to designate the tendency of such aging masters as Poussin, Beethoven and Beckett to focus their energies on essentials. Once the enfant terrible of American Jewish literature,…
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Books On Becoming a ‘Beaner’: A Mexican American Story
‘Mexicans are the scum of the earth,” a student of mine said after being asked to describe the status of the immigrants at her South Carolina high school. She wasn’t menacing. We’ve known each other for years; she knows I’m both Mexican and an immigrant. My student was simply expressing the general view of the…
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Books Found in Portugal: World Famous Jewish-American Novelist
Though he still maintains his accent and caffeinated New York pulse, Richard Zimler is far better known in Portugal, Turkey, Brazil, France and England than in the United States. He may be the world’s most famous unknown living American Jewish writer. In Portugal, he has been the subject of a television documentary, and the same…
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Books Toothy in Gotham
Chronic City By Jonathan Lethem Doubleday, 480 pages, $27.95. ‘Chronic City” initially seemed an important and pleasurable novel to review, just as it must have initially seemed, to Jonathan Lethem, an important and pleasurable novel to write. The ideal reviewer, as if a character in science fiction, relives the writer’s experience word by word, sentence…
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Books Immortal Bloodsucking Opportunists
Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim By Anne Rice Knopf, 268 pages, $25.95. Anne Rice declared in 2005 in the Author’s Note to her novel “Christ the Lord” that her return to Catholicism meant she would no longer “write anything that wasn’t for Christ.” She professed no more vampires, since they reflected a “world…
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Books Six Takes on God
God According to God: A Physicist Proves We’ve Been Wrong About God All Along By Gerald L. Schroeder HarperOne, 256 pages, $25.99. The Evolution of God By Robert Wright Little, Brown and Company, 567 pages, $25.99. Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate By Terry Eagleton Yale University Press, 200 pages, $25.00. Saving…
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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News Israeli flag attack ad prompts antisemitism charge in PA state race — yet boosts the Jewish candidate
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Fast Forward Spain defends soccer star Lamine Yamal over Israel’s criticism of Palestinian flag display
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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