Kirjahaku

Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist AwardWinner of the American Library Association's Sophie Brody MedalFinalist for the National Jewish Book AwardA singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a failed journalist asked to do the unthinkable: Forge Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, New York.Yevgeny Gelman, grandfather of Slava Gelman, "didn't suffer in the exact way" he needs to have suffered to qualify for the restitution the German government has been paying out to Holocaust survivors. But suffer he has--as a Jew in the war; as a second-class citizen in the USSR; as an immigrant to America. So? Isn't his grandson a "writer"?High-minded Slava wants to put all this immigrant scraping behind him. Only the American Dream is not panning out for him--Century, the legendary magazine where he works as a researcher, wants nothing greater from him. Slava wants to be a correct, blameless American--but he wants to be a lionized writer even more.Slava's turn as the Forger of South Brooklyn teaches him that not every fact is the truth, and not every lie a falsehood. It takes more than law-abiding to become an American; it takes the same self-reinvention in which his people excel. Intoxicated and unmoored by his inventions, Slava risks exposure. Cornered, he commits an irrevocable act that finally grants him a sense of home in America, but not before collecting a price from his family.A Replacement Life is a dark, moving, and beautifully written novel about family, honor, and justice.--Salvatore Scribona

Maya Shulman and Alex Rubin met in 1992, when she was a Ukrainian exchange student with "a devil in her head" about becoming a chef instead of a medical worker, and he was the coddled son of Russian immigrants wanting a less predictable life.Twenty years later, Maya Rubin is a medical worker in suburban New Jersey, and Alex is his father's second in the family business. The great dislocation of their lives is their eight-year-old son, Max--adopted from two teenagers in Montana despite Alex's view that "adopted children are second-class."At once a salvation and a mystery to his parents--with whom Max's biological mother left him with the cryptic exhortation, "Don't let my baby do rodeo"--Max suddenly turns feral, consorting with wild animals, eating grass, and running away to sit facedown in a river.Searching for answers, Maya convinces Alex to embark on a cross-country trip to Montana to track down Max's birth parents. But it's Maya who's illuminated by the journey, her own erstwhile wildness summoned for a reckoning by the unsparing landscape, with seismic consequences for herself and her family.

The acclaimed author of A Replacement Life shifts between heartbreak and humor in this gorgeously told recipe-filled memoir. A story of family, immigration, and love—and an epic meal—Savage Feast explores the challenges of navigating two cultures from an unusual angle.A revealing personal story and family memoir told through meals and recipes, Savage Feast begins with Boris’s childhood in Soviet Belarus, where good food was often worth more than money. He describes the unlikely dish that brought his parents together and how years of Holocaust hunger left his grandmother so obsessed with bread that she always kept five loaves on hand. She was the stove magician and Boris’ grandfather the master black marketer who supplied her, evading at least one firing squad on the way. These spoils kept Boris’ family—Jews who lived under threat of discrimination and violence—provided-for and protected.Despite its abundance, food becomes even more important in America, which Boris’ family reaches after an emigration through Vienna and Rome filled with marvel, despair, and bratwurst. How to remain connected to one’s roots while shedding their trauma? The ambrosial cooking of Oksana, Boris’s grandfather’s Ukrainian home aide, begins to show him the way. His quest takes him to a farm in the Hudson River Valley, the kitchen of a Russian restaurant on the Lower East Side, a Native American reservation in South Dakota, and back to Oksana’s kitchen in Brooklyn. His relationships with women—troubled, he realizes, for reasons that go back many generations—unfold concurrently, finally bringing him, after many misadventures, to an American soulmate.Savage Feast is Boris’ tribute to food, that secret passage to an intimate conversation about identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love.

Fishman's worldbuilding is impeccable.... He skillfully ramps up the tension.... Fans of dystopian classics like 1984 will find much to savor in Fishman's spellbinding tale."-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)"The Unwanted is a tightrope of a novel: tense, precise, stunning in its scope and power."--Tea Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of The Morningside"Urgently contemporary and prescient in equal measure, Fishman's The Unwanted channels the spectrum of literature's finest, emotionally visceral dystopian masterworks, from Dune to The Handmaid's Tale, in a fable of survival, resistance and, ultimately, maternal love."--Lea Carpenter, author of IliumAward-winning, New York Times Notable author of A Replacement Life--"a born storyteller with a tremendous gift for language" (San Francisco Chronicle)-- delivers a fierce and staggering new page-turner full of cruelty, tenderness, and heroism, about a young girl and her parents fleeing civil war and the brutal dictatorship that has targeted their family.Susanna, George, and their eight-year-old daughter, Dina, have been lucky, so far, in these four years since war broke out in their country. Even as their fellow "minority-sect" neighbors and classmates are murdered or imprisoned, George's loyal work teaching "dominant-sect" literature has kept them fed and protected. But then the day comes: the university fires George--despite his years of collaboration, he is no longer safe. Left without money or allies, it is time for the family to run.Embarking on a harrowing trip through refugee camps and across the sea, both George and Susanna are forced in their own ways to make sacrifices to keep Dina safe, while Dina fights to understand the chaotic world crashing down around her. But with each member of the family struggling to survive in circumstances beyond their control, lies and betrayals multiply until it seems impossible for any of them to reach across the abyss. The Unwanted is a stunning story of what the most powerless among us will do for dignity and safety.

Breaking down the elements that go into successful imaginative works, The Creative Writer leads aspiring writers through the skills needed to construct each. The assignments, designed to make students more aware of language and more confident in their own ingenuity, build on each other until beginning creative writers have successfully created their own stories, poems, and essays. • Simple but innovative exercises encourage young writers to strengthen their vocabulary and become aware of the patterns of sentences • Legends and folklore are used to teach point of view, characterization, plotting, and other vital skills • Classic poetry serves as a model for the student’s own original poems • Unlike most “how to write” books, The Creative Writer is designed to be used in a mentor/student relationship, with teaching, guidance, and evaluation tips provided for the mentor or teacher • Can be used as a complement to Writing With Skill or on its own

Complements Peace Hill Press’s expository series Writing With Skill by providing the imaginative element that many students want. Unlike most “how to write” books, these are designed to be used in a mentor/student relationship, with teaching, guidance, and evaluation tips provided for the mentor or teacher. All exercises build towards the production of finished creative pieces. Sequential, logical, step-by-step instruction. The second level builds on the introductory volume, The Creative Writer: Five Finger Exercises, but can be started directly by older students. Instruction in the five essentials of fiction: plot, characters, dialogue, point of view, and setting. Offers guidance in the essential art of poetry: sound, rhythm, word choice, and poem construction.

• Complements Peace Hill Press’s expository series Writing With Skill by providing the imaginative element that many students want. • Unlike most “how to write” books, these are designed to be used in a mentor/student relationship, with teaching, guidance, and evaluation tips provided for the mentor or teacher. • All exercises build towards the production of finished creative pieces • Sequential, logical, step-by-step instruction • The third level builds on the introductory volume, The Creative Writer: Five Finger Exercises, but can be started directly by older students. • Instruction in the five essentials of fiction: plot, characters, dialogue, point of view, and setting. Level Three leads students into the construction of more complex plots, evocative settings, and three-dimensional characters • Guidance in the essential art of poetry: sound, rhythm, word choice, and poem construction. Level Three draws students into even more sophisticated use of words and themes.

Building on the skills taught in the first three levels, The Creative Writer, Level Four: Becoming a Writer guides young writers from idea to polished short story or poem in a single volume. Becoming a Writer also walks students through the transition from study to practice, broadening the series' focus by discussing the writing life -- how to find and submit to literary journals, how to develop discipline, and how to persevere in the face of rejection. Reviews and strengthens the writer’s grasp on the five essentials of fiction: plot, character, dialogue, point of view, and setting. Guides the writer into the effective, sophisticated use of the essentials of poetry: sound, rhythm, word choice, and structure. All exercises build toward the production of mature, finished creative piece Can be used as a complement to Writing With Skill or on its own.