tectonic plates of truth and memory.”
Chabon will be at the Philadelphia Free
Library’s main branch to read from
Moonglow in December.

While Chabon’s book reflects on Jewish
biography, it’s not nearly as marinated in the
Jewish experience as Here I Am, the latest by
Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is
Illuminated; Extremely Loud & Incredibly
Close), whose very title references the story
of Abraham and Isaac in the book of
Genesis. The doorstop-length novel, now
out in paperback, tells the story of a Jewish
family in crisis, and the way their Jewish
identity, religious beliefs and connection
with Israel informs their lives. Author Lev
Grossman, writing for Time, compared Here
I Am to Middlemarch, while other critics
have likened the author to Roth,
Bellow and Malumud.

As Safran Foer
reflects on the Amer-
ican Jewish responsi-
bility toward Israel,
one of the Jewish
state’s most impor-
— VOGUE
tant writers, Amos
Oz, has just pub-
lished his own new
novel, Judas — his first full-length work
since A Tale of Love and Darkness. The
novel, which centers on three misfits living
in a mysterious old house in Jerusalem in
1959, serves as an allegory, of sorts, for the
evolution of the state of Israel, and offers a
new spin on the biblical story of Judas.

“One of the most triumphant novels of his
career,” said the Forward.

Along with Oz, the famed Israeli author
of the novel A Pigeon and a Boy also has
new work out. In his latest translated work
of fiction, Two She-Bears: A Novel, Meir
Shalev writes of a schoolteacher in pres-
ent-day Israel who’s trying to unravel a
mystery that took place on a moshava in
1930, in early British Palestine. According
to official accounts, three farmers commit-
ted suicide in the same year. But were they
all suicides, really? What is the truth about
these men living in rural Israel? Elaine
Margolin, writing in the Jerusalem Post,
called Two She-Bears “a masterful work
that explores with great insight the myster-
ies that surround male closeness.”
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