Jewish-Turkish fiction writer Mario Levi's first book to be published in English, his 800 page 1999 novel Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale, is a challenging but ultimately worthwhile read that provides a unique view of Turkey'...
It's been two years since I last covered Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition's thrice yearly large group shows in a Civil War era warehouse building on the Red Hook waterfront. This past Sunday I previewed that...
Just when I'd all but stopped writing about culture events in favor of book reviews I'm going to plug an event this weekend as a favor to a friend. Most readers are familiar with string quartets...
In the movie Beginners Christopher Plumber plays a man who in late middle age falls in love with a younger man and discovers that he is gay. Jonathan Galassi's new book, Left-Handed: Poems (published today by...
Will Europa Editions' newly published English translation of Italian writer Diego De Silva's comic novel I Hadn't Understood appeal to Jewish New Yorkers? In my New York Journal of Books review I compare Mr. De...
One of the reasons we read fiction is to experience foreign places and lives different from our own which certainly describes two new books published today.In my New York Journal of Books review of Stay Awake, Dan Chaon'...
A language epidemic erupts among Jewish families; children's speech makes their parents deathly ill. Soon it spreads to the rest of the population. This dark fantasy is the premise of Jewish New Yorker Ben Marcus's new...
In my other gig I write book reviews for New York Journal of Books; here is a list of Jewish fiction and poetry books I reviewed in the past year in reverse chronological order:Adult Fiction:Scenes from Village...
In an interview on last night's Charlie Rose show Israeli writer Amos Oz discussed his latest book, Scenes from Village Life. In my New York Journal of Books review of the book I write: "Loneliness, lethargy, depression...
New York Jewish fiction writer Susan Daitch's third novel Paper Conspiracies, which was published last week by City Lights Books, takes an indirect approach to late Nineteenth Century France's Dreyfus Affair by way of peripheral minor...
Former NPR correspondant Anna Solomon's debut novel, The Little Bride, is published today by Riverhead Books, a division of New York publisher Penguin USA. In my New York Journal of Books review I describe the book as  ...
What happens when a New York Jewish pack-rat daughter inherits her New York Jewish pack-rat father's belongings? She embarks on a Jewish genealogical search for her and her dad's long lost relatives. Nancy K...
This morning I delivered a a brief talk, a Davar Torah, on Parashat Ra'eh, the weekly Torah portion, at Park Slope Jewish Center in Brooklyn. My talk's sources include Deuteronomy 11:26 -12:28, ...
At the time of her death in 2005, Dahlia Ravikovitch was Israel's second best loved poet after Yehuda Amichai. She was also a committed peace activist, yet her readers included Israelis from all points on the political spectrum...
Today New York publisher The Dial Press, a division of Random House, releases Haley Tanner's debut novel Vaclav and Lena, a coming of age tale about Russian-Jewish immigrant children in Brooklyn. In my New York Journal of...
Today is Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, and I'd like to mark the day by sharing an oral-history from The Jewish-American Marriage Oral History Project of a couple of Jewish New Yorkers...
Today Boston and New York publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt releases Serbian-Canadian writer David Albahari's novel Leeches. Albahari is the author of 11 novels and 9 collections of short stories. His previous novel Götz and...
When Canadian poet and novelist Leonard Cohen decided to become a singer/songwriter four and a half decades ago he moved to New York City to launch his new career. New York is mentioned in his songs "Chelsea Hotel...
NY Times film critic A.O. Scott will give four lectures with illustrative film clips on The Holocaust in Film on consecutive Sunday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00 PM starting this Sunday March 20, 2010 at Park Slope...
It is a fortunate coincidence that today is both International Women's Day and the release date of Marge Piercy's The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems 1980-2010 by New York publisher Alfred Knopf. In...
Posted on February 21, 2012
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