The Shovel and the Loom

The Shovel and the Loom PDF Author: Carl Friedman
Publisher: Persea Books
ISBN: 9780892554089
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Chaya, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, lives in the old Jewish quarter of Antwerp, Belgium. Twenty years old, a philosophy student (and nonbeliever), she takes care of the children of an Hasidic family by day. At night she stays up reading - Nietzsche, Einstein, the Baal Shem Tov. The more she reads, the less she seems to understand. Does God exist? What does it mean to be a Jew? Chaya questions the reasons for anti-Semitism, the role of women in Judaism, the reasons for suffering. Mr. Apfelschnitt, an old friend of her father, tells Chaya that Creation is a masterpiece, that Science can't replace God or the Torah. But her father advises her to study physics. Then he goes back to his old maps of Antwerp, looking for the spot to dig, to recover the two suitcases he buried during the war. Trying to put her Auschwitz past behind her, Chaya's mother obsesses over baking, tea, and weaving. Her advice to Chaya: go out dancing. Finally, it is Chaya's love for Simeha, the three-year-old boy in her care, that provides the key. She clashes with his tradition-bound father, then propelled by a tragic accident, learns just how much she is tied to her people and her faith.

The Shovel and the Loom

The Shovel and the Loom PDF Author: Carl Friedman
Publisher: Persea Books
ISBN: 9780892554089
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chaya, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, lives in the old Jewish quarter of Antwerp, Belgium. Twenty years old, a philosophy student (and nonbeliever), she takes care of the children of an Hasidic family by day. At night she stays up reading - Nietzsche, Einstein, the Baal Shem Tov. The more she reads, the less she seems to understand. Does God exist? What does it mean to be a Jew? Chaya questions the reasons for anti-Semitism, the role of women in Judaism, the reasons for suffering. Mr. Apfelschnitt, an old friend of her father, tells Chaya that Creation is a masterpiece, that Science can't replace God or the Torah. But her father advises her to study physics. Then he goes back to his old maps of Antwerp, looking for the spot to dig, to recover the two suitcases he buried during the war. Trying to put her Auschwitz past behind her, Chaya's mother obsesses over baking, tea, and weaving. Her advice to Chaya: go out dancing. Finally, it is Chaya's love for Simeha, the three-year-old boy in her care, that provides the key. She clashes with his tradition-bound father, then propelled by a tragic accident, learns just how much she is tied to her people and her faith.

Nightfather

Nightfather PDF Author: Carl Friedman
Publisher: Persea Books
ISBN: 9780892554072
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
"The legacy of the Holocaust is passed on to a young girl through her father's stories in this celebrated novel, translated from the Dutch by Arnold and Erica Pomerans. In a moving Afterword, the author sets the historical context for the novel and speaks directly about her own father, upon whom the novel is based"--Publisher.

The Shovel and the Loom

The Shovel and the Loom PDF Author: Carl Friedman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780892552160
Category : Belgium
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Chaya's mother wants her to go out dancing. Always trying to put her Auschwitz past behind her, she compulsively busies herself with cake-baking, tea, and weaving.

Kaddish

Kaddish PDF Author: Leon Wieseltier
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307557235
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 604

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Book Description
A National Jewish Book Award-winning autobiography that's "an astonishing fusion of learning and psychic intensity; its poignance and lucidity should be an authentic benefit to readers, Jewish and gentile" (The New York Times Book Review). Children have obligations to their parents: the Talmud says "one must honor him in life and one must honor him in death." Beside his father’s grave, a diligent but doubting son begins the mourner’s kaddish and realizes he needs to know more about the prayer issuing from his lips. So begins Leon Wieseltier’s National Jewish Book Award–winning autobiography, Kaddish, the spiritual journal of a man commanded by Jewish law to recite a prayer three times daily for a year and driven, by ardor of inquiry, to explore its origins. Here is one man’s urgent exploration of Jewish liturgy and law, from the 10th-century legend of a wayward ghost to the speculations of medieval scholars on the grief of God to the perplexities of a modern rabbi in the Kovno ghetto. Here too is a mourner’s unmannered response to the questions of fate, freedom, and faith stirred in death’s wake. Lyric, learned, and deeply moving, Wieseltier’s Kaddish is a narrative suffused with love: a son’s embracing the tradition bequeathed to him by his father, a scholar’s savoring they beauty he was taught to uncover, and a writer’s revealing it, proudly, unadorned, to the reader.

Wake

Wake PDF Author: Anna Hope
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0857521950
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Na de Eerste Wereldoorlog blijken de levens van drie heel verschillende vrouwen naadloos in elkaar te passen met de komst van een oorlogsveteraan.

The Gray Lover

The Gray Lover PDF Author: Carl Friedman
Publisher: Persea Books
ISBN: 9780892552962
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
A trio of stories on Jews by a Dutch writer. In the title story an unhappy old man finds solace with a donkey, Holy Fire is on a fanatical Zionist, and in Bette, a woman watches her mother die of cancer, being her cheerful self to the very end.

Shards of Time

Shards of Time PDF Author: Lynn Flewelling
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345546733
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
Acclaimed author Lynn Flewelling brings her beloved Nightrunners series to a close—at least for now—with a thrilling novel of murder, mystery, and magic. The governor of the sacred island of Korous and his mistress have been killed inside a locked and guarded room. The sole witnesses to the crime—guards who broke down the doors, hearing the screams from within—have gone mad with terror, babbling about ghosts . . . and things worse than ghosts. Dispatched to Korous by the queen, master spies Alec and Seregil find all the excitement and danger they could want—and more. For an ancient evil has been awakened there, a great power that will not rest until it has escaped its otherworldly prison and taken revenge on all that lives. And only those like Alec—who have died and returned to life—can step between the worlds and confront the killer . . . even if it means a second and all too permanent death. Praise for Lynn Flewelling’s Casket of Souls “Full of intrigue and plots upon plots.”—RT Book Reviews

Strange as This Weather Has Been

Strange as This Weather Has Been PDF Author: Ann Pancake
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582439915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
A West Virginia family struggles amid the booms and busts of the Appalachian coal industry in this “powerful, sure-footed, and haunting” novel with echoes of John Steinbeck (New York Times Book Review). Set in present day West Virginia, this debut novel tells the story of a coal mining family—a couple and their four children—living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their hometown. As the mine turns the mountains “to slag and wastewater,” workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters. Strange as This Weather Has Been follows several members of the family, with a particular focus on fifteen–year–old Bant and her mother, Lace. Working at a motel, Bant becomes involved with a young miner while her mother contemplates joining the fight against the mining companies. As domestic conflicts escalate at home, the children are pushed more and more frequently outside among junk from the floods and felled trees in the hollows—the only nature they have ever known. But Bant has other memories and is as curious and strong–willed as her mother, and ultimately comes to discover the very real threat of destruction that looms as much in the landscape as it does at home.

How Much of These Hills Is Gold

How Much of These Hills Is Gold PDF Author: C Pam Zhang
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525537228
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2020 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE WINNER OF THE ROSENTHAL FAMILY FOUNDATION AWARD, FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION "5 UNDER 35" HONOREE NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Belongs on a shelf all of its own.” —NPR “Outstanding.” —The Washington Post “Revolutionary . . . A visionary addition to American literature.” —Star Tribune An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape—trying not just to survive but to find a home. Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future. Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and reimagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it’s about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.

Change of Heart

Change of Heart PDF Author: Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743496752
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?