Kirjahaku

Filled with Curt Leviant's signature blend of humor and drama, these two enchanting and original novellas lure readers into a dazzling storybook world. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Original Music of the Hebrew Alphabet" is set in Budapest during the Communist era. The story focuses on the tenuous seesaw between Dr. Isaac Gantz, a musicologist, and engineer Ferdinand Friedman, a Holocaust survivor who believes that he possesses one of the greatest manuscripts of the ages, a Rosetta Stone of Judaica. Friedman is willing to share it—but there is a "but." In pursuing this prize, Gantz enters a world of strange human relationships filled with doubts and surprises. A vibrant cast of characters adds dimension to this gripping story in which Jewish folklore, music, and history coalesce. "Weekend in Mustara" unfolds on the fictional island of Mustara in southern Europe, a mountainous, totalitarian country that tolerates Judaism. Its few Jews cling to their heritage, embodied in their beautiful but sparsely attended synagogue and their museum, where a great memorial book is inscribed with the names of all Mustara Jews martyred during World War II. A scholar of medieval Hebrew manuscripts comes to the island, searching for traces of Yehuda Halevi, the great Hebrew poet of the Spanish Golden Age. He is soon enmeshed among elusive personalities and tangled loyalties, but only when he finds himself displaced in time—in a kind of theater of the absurd—are the purposes of his journey finally realized.

A love story with a comic flair. The novel explores the phenomena of fame and hero-worship, as well as the relationship between life and art.

An English translation of one of the most fascinating works in medieval Hebrew letters. A rarity, this refurbished Hebrew translation of an Arthurian romance is the only known text of its kind in existence. Based on the writings of an anonymous Italian Jew in 1279, the author presents two stories. The first relates Merlin's role in the seductions of Igerna by Pendragon and the consequent birth of Arthur. The second tells of Arthur's rise to royal glory, of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere, his meeting with the maid of Askalot and his skill at a jousting tournament. This romance exists in a unique copy at the Vatican Library, which Curt Leviant personally examined. He offers a readable version of that text in corrected Hebrew with English transliteration on facing pages and an analysis of Jewish aspects of the piece. He also traces its origins to an old French tale.

In Curt Leviant’s wry, funny tales of love and desire set in various locales—the deep South, Boston, New York, Italy, Israel—the protagonists are men, women, guys and gals of various backgrounds and ages. Some are teenagers; others are students, writers, salesmen, teachers; there’s even a great-grandfather in the mix. We meet Holocaust survivors, a pretty petty thief, a playwright, students on vacation, a Polish gentile woman in love with Jewish history, a non-Jewish Holocaust historian, a book salesman, a Yiddish artist, a synagogue architect, a secretary at Harvard, and other delectable characters.What unites all these disparate people is the universal desire for love and affection—some claw, some snag, others just wait. And some even succeed.Leviant’s newest collection stands alongside his substantial oeuvre in the vein of Bellow, Singer, Kafka—a place they’re likely to remain for a long, long time.

“A comedy of errors [and] bedroom farce” from an award-winning author critically acclaimed for his satiric stories of love and Jewish experience (Kirkus Reviews). Reunited at their Jewish day school reunion, Guido and Charlie find themselves attracted to the same woman, a beautiful cellist named Aviva. Guido, a photographer, makes his move by going to Aviva for music lessons and soon enough, they become lovers. What Guido doesn’t know is that his friend Charlie, a psychologist, has taken Aviva as a client and is a party to the relationship through Aviva’s weekly confessions. Written from the point of view of all three characters, with a swirl of delightful supporting characters and even a directory of footnotes that adds expansions, humor and surprises to the narrative, Diary of an Adulterous Woman is a highly entertaining look at desire, jealousy, the power of secrets and the all-too-human complications both longing and love can bring.

This award-winning novel is “a delightful, inventive tale” about the pursuit of love and literary fame from “a compassionate and witty satirist” (Kirkus Reviews). It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for middle-aged Ezra Shultish—a chance to the meet his literary hero, Nobel Laureate Bar Nun, a writer Ezra has worshipped for most of his career as a teacher and translator. Hoping to get a recording of the author reading his story, The Yemenite Girl, Shultish travels to Israel, where he finds himself pursuing his own Yemenite girl, as well as the elusive author. But will Ezra get the girl—or his own glimpse of literary fame? Winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award, The Yemenite Girl is Curt Leviant’s comic novel on the nature of celebrity and the relationship between life and art. “Shultish is a man with a life of his own. . . . And the celebrity, too, is remarkably drawn. . . . [The book] is done with great tact, feeling, and skill.” —Saul Bellow, Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize for Literature–winning author “A passionate story . . . The charm of the text and the intensity of the subtext is what keeps the pages turning.” —The New York Times Book Review “Good comic writing and satire on the Hebrew literary scene with its jealous politicking for literary prizes.” —The Washington Post

A humorous collection of love stories from an award-winning author who has been called “a compassionate and witty satirist” (Kirkus Reviews). From Holocaust survivors to Yiddish artists, a petty thief and a Polish shiksa with a passion for Jewish history, what unites the delectable characters in Curt Leviant’s witty collection of romantic tales is the universal desire for love and admiration. With settings as various as the Deep South, Boston, New York, Italy, Israel, each story is a wry look at romantic pursuit, each relationship as unique as the lovers themselves. Whether or not love succeeds for Leviant’s all-too-human characters, the journey is always filled with humor and heart.

A serio-comic novel that plunges into the life of Shmulik Gafni, an Israeli professor of Yiddish. Two contrasting motivations plague Gafni: his extended, obsessive search in Poland for the man who murdered his father in the notorious Kielce pogrom, and his infatuation with Malina, a beauteous non-Jewish Polish linguist studying Yiddish. Guess who her private tutor is? Rumors fly. Will synchronicity also fly?

In Venice, the narrator meets two women, one a devout and sensual Parisian, the other, an enigmatic beauty, who is mute but can hear. At the wedding--whoever bride may be--a 17th century rabbi will preside. For in this true fiction, characters cross time lines.Fiction. Jewish Studies.

While in the archives room of the Siena Municipal Public Library, I noticed a cardboard box labeled "Lorenzini?" Since Lorenzini wrote Pinocchio under the pen-name Collodi, I opened the box and was astounded to see a handwritten manuscript titled: Tinocchia, the Adventures of a Jewish Puppetta. I photographed the pages, and soon enough translated the story into English. Tinocchia, the story's narrator, is created by her carpenter father, Yossi, who named her after the Hebrew word for "baby," tinok, and as a nod to his fellow woodworker, Gepetto, the creator of Pinocchio. While riding on her magic cart, Tinocchia bumps into a puppetto who introduces himself as Nipocchio. Naturally, the puppetto's nose grows . . . Pinocchio and Tinocchia share adventures: Tinocchia becomes involved with Samael, the Dark Angel; Pinocchio and Tinocchia encounter pirates on a sailboat which gets overturned in a storm. One day Pinocchio visits asa real boy and offers Tinocchia a magic salve. She scolds him that he has no right to take the salve. In any case, she does not want mortality; she wants to live. Pinocchio turns back into a puppetto to be with her. And, like in a true fairy tale, they live happily ever . . . after . . . presumably.

Set in New York City and Prague in 1992, Kafka's Son follows a first-person narrator who is a documentary filmmaker. In a New York synagogue, he meets an elderly Czech Jew named Jiri, once the head of the famous Jewish Museum in Prague, with whom he discovers a shared love of Kafka. Inspired by this friendship, the narrator travels to Prague to make a film about Jewish life in the city and its Kafka connections.In his search for answers, he crosses paths with the beadle of the famous 900-year-old Altneushul synagogue, the rumored home to a legendary golem hidden away in a secret attic-which may or may not exist; a mysterious man who may or may not be Kafka's son-and who may or may not exist; Mr. Klein, who although several years younger than Jiri may or may not be his father; and an enigmatic young woman in a blue beret-who is almost certainly real.Maybe. As Prague itself becomes as perplexing and unpredictable as its transient inhabitants, Curt Leviant unfolds a labyrinthine tale that is both detective novel and love story, captivating maze and realistic fantasy, and a one hundred percent stunning tribute to Kafka and his city.

With the lyrical joy and lighthearted wordplay that have won him critical acclaim, celebrated Jewish author Curt Leviant delivers a charming literary love story against the backdrop of the lush Italian countrysideSuccessful author Giorgio is vacationing in Parma when he meets Sofia, a beautiful woman who bears a striking resemblance to the famous Italian actress Sophia Loren. Giorgio is ecstatic when the lookalike asks for his email, expressing her desire to stay in touch and discuss a problem of hers. To his disappointment, their communication consists not of their own budding romance, but of the details of Sofia’s extramarital love affair, a drama that plays out with characters Giorgio has never met. Sofia consults the author in writing an ending to her story—and as authors do, Giorgio rewrites it, desperate to find a place for himself in it. In this enticing email romanza, Leviant delivers a breathless confessional with two beginnings and two endings, leaving it up to the reader to decipher what’s real.

Award-winning author Curt Leviant delivers a joyful reimagining of the classic tale of Don Quixote through the eyes of his long-overlooked sidekick, Sancho Panza In a dusty old second-hand bookshop in a side street in Sevilla, an unnamed narrator discovers a 1751 edition of Don Quixote—one that is narrated, most unusually, by Sancho Panza. With Curt Leviant’s signature whimsy, this audaciously titled novel reimagines Cervantes’s classic tale through Sancho's eyes, as he and the Don revisit the sites of their former adventures, embark on new ones, and finally go their separate ways when Sancho sets out to write an epic tale of his own, accompanied by a playfully-out-of-place hero from Arthurian romances, Sir Gawain. Rich with literary history and yet utterly original, My Adventures With, and Without, the Knight of the Mournful Countenance, His Grace, Don Quixote, as told by Sancho Panza, Ex-Squire is a reader’s romp from the first page.