This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
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Books Have You Got a Story for Us? Sweepstakes Winners
On a brisk December night, a crowd gathered into the Center for Jewish History anticipating the launch of an exciting new book. “Have I Got a Story for You” translated 42 astonishing Yiddish stories into English for the first time. The touching collection of Yiddish stories intertwined the old world and the new, traditional and…
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Books Joseph Roth’s ‘The Hotel Years’ Is A Mirror Of Our Times
Although Joseph Roth’s “The Hotel Years” first appeared in 2015, the beginning of 2017 seems, unfortunately, to be the perfect time to open the text. The book is a collection of short pieces that Roth, one of the preeminent journalists of his time (at one point, the Frankfurter Zeitung was paying him at the staggering…
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Books Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Lady-Lacking Reading List
As I was perusing the New York Times book reviews this weekend (yes, the section whose cover features a review by Woody Allen), I happened upon an interview with French-Jewish writer and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy. As someone with an above-average interest in French and Jewish (I’ve got a doctorate in just that topic, and…
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Books ‘Alt-Righter’ Milo Yiannopoulos Inks $250,000 Book Deal
Richard Spencer, inventor of the term “alt-right” is leading Nazi salutes. Cadillac is recruiting “neo-Nazis” for a commercial. And now provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos signing a book deal worth $250,000. Yiannopoulos identified himself early on with the “alt-right,” but more with the folks who disdain what they call “political correctness” than with the ones who use…
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Books Meet Franz Kafka and Simone de Beauvoir’s Book Designer
Earlier today, the LA Review of Books published an interview with Jewish book cover designer, Peter Mendelsund. Even if you don’t recognize the name, if you’re a reader you’ve almost certainly seen his work. Among other projects, Mendelsund has redesigned covers from the back catalogs of such notable authors as Franz Kafka, Simone De Beauvoir,…
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Books Is Alexander Portnoy White?
It’s struck me lately that the American writer perhaps most deeply associated with White Male Writer-ness is one who made his name writing fiction about identity. Google “Philip Roth” and “white male” and you find an endless stream of essays that offer up Roth as a prime example of the white male literary novelist. As…
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Books Novelist Etgar Keret Says He Doesn’t Publish in Hebrew Because Privacy
— The celebrated novelist Etgar Keret said he refrains from publishing some of his works in Hebrew to protect the privacy of his family, upon whom he bases some of his writing. Keret, who in 1996 received Israel’s Prime Minister Award for Literature, among other distinctions, revealed this during a talk last week before Russian…
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Books Trump’s Literary Accomplishments, Assessed
Samantha Bee offers up the not-implausible possibility that Donald Trump can’t read. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post has the scoop on a novel Trump had gotten ghostwritten, but that no longer bears his byline. It’s “an incredibly sexist novel,” according to HuffPo’s Todd Van Luling. Were we expecting it to be any other kind? Phoebe Maltz…
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In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish אויסשטעלונג: ווי דער גרויל פֿונעם חורבן האָט געווירקט אויף אַמעריקאַנער קינסטלערExhibit: How the horror of the Holocaust impacted American artists
די ווערק פֿון דרײַ קינסטלער גיבן איבער אַנדערע קוקווינקלען אויף דער אויסראָטונג פֿון ייִדישן לעבן אין מיזרח־אייראָפּע.
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Theater The new Anne Frank musical wants you to laugh at ‘woke culture’ — but is it funny?
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Film & TV How a Jewish schoolteacher from New Jersey made it to Hollywood and Broadway at the same time
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Yiddish World A glimpse of the Jewish left in 1920s Palestine
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