Book Club Selections

(Fiction, 336 pp. 1999) Narrated from the collective perspective of a synagogue’s Ladies’ Auxiliary, Mirvis’s inspired debut depicts the perceived threat that the arrival of free-spirited Batsheva poses to the insular Orthodox community of Memphis, Tennessee. The intergenerational conflict that ensues illuminates the difficulty of maintaining tradition while honoring personal…...

(Fiction, 304pp. Hebrew 2015; English translation 2017) Three tenants in a suburban Tel Aviv apartment building each tell their stories, and in the process explore the connections between identity, memory and loneliness. The first in an urgent conversation with an old friend, now a writer, in a restaurant; the second…...

Fiction, 374 p. Hebrew, 2004; English translation, 2010) Narrated from multiple perspectives this novel follows a handful of neighbors in the town of Mevasseret, just outside Jerusalem, whose Arab inhabitants were displaced in 1948. Nevo masterfully explores the dualities of life in Israel, and delicately draws out the hope and…...

(Fiction, 357 pp. 2001) The protagonist of this semi-autobiographical novel was born in Cuba and grew up in Chicago in a community of refugees who nurtured the hope that they might eventually return to their homeland. When her job takes her back to Cuba, she discovers that her ostensibly Catholic…...

(Nonfiction, 368 pp. 2012) Often referred to as the “Austrian Mona Lisa,” Gustav Klimt’s gold-leafed portrait of Jewish art patron Adele Bloch-Bauer has a complicated and controversial history.  O’Connor relates the story of the painting, casting light on its creation during the Viennese Belle Epoque, its confiscation under Nazi rule,…...

(Fiction, 624 pp. 2010)In Fall 1937 Andras Lévi leaves Hungary to study architecture in Paris, and his brother Tibor leaves for medical school in Italy. Both men eventually return to Hungary with their wives until the war upends their world. This intricate mélange of historical events and personal drama is…...

(Fiction, 155 pp. Hebrew, 1994; English translation, 1997) It is the summer of 1947 in Palestine under the British Mandate. A 12-year-old Jewish boy befriends a British soldier to improve his English, only to find himself branded as a traitor by his friends. A coming of age novel with a…...

(Memoir, 560 pp. Hebrew, 2002; English translation, 2004) Past and present spiral in this dense memoir of growing up in Jerusalem in the years before and after Israeli independence. Oz’s richly colored tales of his European immigrant family trying to recreate itself in an alien landscape allow readers to know…...

(Short Stories, 192 pp. Hebrew 2012; English translation, 2013) This group of connected stories set on a fictional agricultural kibbutz in the late 1950s offers revelatory glimpses into the members’ secrets, longings, and dissatisfactions. Review by Alberto Manguel, the Guardian, May 8, 2013 Review by Liam Hoare, Los Angeles Review…...

(Fiction, 320 pp. Hebrew, 2014; English translation, 2016) In 1959 Jerusalem, a young scholar finds work as a caregiver for a brilliant but cantankerous old man. In the house is also an alluring widow, the daughter of a deceased Zionist leader. This love story and coming-of-age novel is also an…...