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 Rachel Kushner’s ‘The Flamethrowers’ Arrives With a Bang
● The Flamethrowers By Rachel Kushner Scribner, 400 pgs, $26.99 In many ways, “The Flamethrowers,” Rachel Kushner’s novel about the historical, political, cultural and — most daringly — ideological chaos of the 1970s, is a simple bildungsroman. It tracks the sentimental education of its heroine, Reno, from starry-eyed, eager youth, lusting after experience — her…
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Books From Awkward Fat Kid to Confident Gay Activist
A plump, cherubic bar-mitzvah boy beams from the cover the new memoir “Oy Vey! I’m Glad I’m Gay!” (Intracoastal Media). That’s Barry Losinsky, the book’s author, a retired Maryland school psychologist and one of many unsung pioneers in a generation of gay men who came out when it still felt dangerous. Born to Russian-immigrant parents,…
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Books Author Blog: Visiting the Soviet Union
Yesterday, Peri Devaney wrote about working on the postscript for her anthology, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press). Today we hear from Ron Rubin, the prolific professor she anthologized. Their blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and…
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Books Jewish Novel Included on Man Booker Longlist
Life in London’s Jewish community and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, billionaires in China and hard times in Ireland all feature in the novels vying for this year’s Man Booker Prize. The longlist for the prize, one of the English language’s top fiction awards, names 13 writers from seven countries. “This is surely the most diverse longlist…
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Books How To Be an Egotistical Writer From South Africa
Things I Don’t Want to Know: A Response to George Orwell’s Why I Write By Deborah Levy Notting Hill Editions In his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” George Orwell identified four great motives for writing, including aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. The other, he observed, was that writers are “vain and self-centred,” motivated…
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Books Author Blog: Putting Myself on the Line
Peri Devaney’s new book, “A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty-Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin” (Syracuse University Press), is now available. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: As a…
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Books Naftali Herts Kon’s Works Wrenched Out of Poland’s Clutches
On both occasions that the KGB arrested the Yiddish writer and poet Naftali Herts Kon, it burned his writings. When Kon escaped from the Soviet Union to Poland in 1959, he thought everything would be different — but it wasn’t. When the Polish Communists arrested Kon in 1960, they simply confiscated his writings and refused…
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Books Yiddish Theater and Birth Control
Earlier this week, Melissa R. Klapper wrote about abortion and the complexity of halacha and five American Jewish women you’ve (probably) never heard of. Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: At…
Explore
Most Popular
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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News Middlebury College Hillel votes to rebrand, distancing from parent group on Israel
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