NATHAN ENGLANDER
Thursday, April 16 at 7:30 p.m.

First published a year ago to widespread acclaim, Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases (new in paper, Vintage Contemporaries) was a much-awaited first novel, coming nearly a decade after his superb debut collection of stories, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. This novel was full of reach, heart, history, and horror—as life was for so many in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, during the 1970s, time of its 'dirty war.' "Englander's novel takes on an epic quality in which Jewish parents descend into the underworld and journey through circles of hell. Gogol, I.B. Singer and Orwell all come to mind, but Englander's book is unique in its layering of Jewish tradition and totalitarian obliteration ... Englander writes with increasing power and authority ... he probes deeper and deeper, looking at what absence means, reading the shadow letters on history's curtain." - Allegra Goodman, Publishers Weekly.

« previous | next »