The books I recommend have stayed with me years after I read them. Iāve always been fascinated by my Jewish heritage and the rich traditions of my forebearers. Iāve incorporated some of that heritage in my own work as an author. Most recently, I published a historical novel about the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, which took me down a rabbit hole of research into Jewish literature. I revisited books Iād loved for decades and discovered new books I loved.
I wrote
Anything But Yes: A Novel of Anna Del Monte, Jewish Citizen of Rome, 1749
I loved this book when I read it years ago, and I immediately started reading anything I could find by this compelling author.
Through his fine writing, I was able to live in the world of Asher, a young artist grappling with the conflict of being true to his work without defying the tenets of his religion.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ā¢ In this modern classic from the National Book Awardānominated author of The Chosen, a young religious artist is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels, even when it leads him to blasphemy.
āA novel of finely articulated tragic power .... Little short of a work of genius.āāThe New York Times Book Review
Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. He grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritualā¦
No understanding of Jewish culture is complete without a reading of the work of Sholem Aleichman, which means peace be with you, the pen name of Sholem Rabinovitch, perhaps the best-known author in Yiddish literature.
He wrote many stories of shtetl life and is best known for his tales of Tevye the milkman and his daughters, which was the inspiration for the musical Fiddler on the Roof.
Tevye is the compassionate, lovable, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, and Tevye the Dairyman is a heartwarming and poignant account of life in turn-of-the-century Russia. Through the workaday world of a rural dairyman, his grit, wit, and heart, his daughters' courtships and marriages, and the eventual menace of the pogroms, Sholem Aleichem reveals the fabric of a now-vanished world.
Motl is the clear-eyed, spirited, mischievous boy who narrates Motl the Cantor's Son, a comic novel about his emigration with his family from Russia to America. It is a journey that mirrors a larger exodus, telling the story of the disintegration ofā¦
India Muerte and the Ship of the Dead
by
Set Sytes,
After a night of misadventure, a roguish street lad from Mexico Island wakes up aboard a legendary ship crewed by skeletons. In search of the father heās never metāa great mound of treasure would be nice, tooāIndia sails the fantastical Caribbean on the Ship of the Dead, exploring the colonialā¦
I was captivated by this epic tale of Grazia dei Rossi, secretary to the powerful wife of the Popeās physician and the daughter of a powerful banker.
The book gave me a fascinating peek into Jewish life in Renaissance Italy as Grazia struggles between the temptations of Christian life and the pull of her Jewish heritage.
A sweeping saga of intrigue and romance set during the Italian Renaissance and told through the eyes of Grazia dei Rossi, a young Jewish woman torn between duty and forbidden romance, who wins our hearts with her recorded secrets of love.
Grazia dei Rossi, private secretary to the world-renowned Isabella dāEste, is the daughter of an eminent Jewish banker, the wife of the popeās Jewish physician, and the lover of a Christian prince. In a āsecret book,ā written as a legacy for her son, she records her struggles to choose between the seductions of the Christian world and a returnā¦
Singer, one of the great names in Jewish literature, takes his readers to turn of the century Eastern Europe and enfolds them in the hierarchy of Jewish society. He masterfully captures a way of life that flourished before the Second World War.
I was so engrossed in this powerful story I immediately began reading Singerās other works.
The vanished way of life of Eastern European Jews in the early part of the twentieth century is the subject of this extraordinary novel. All the strata of this complex society were populated by powerfully individual personalities, and the whole community pulsated with life and vitality. The affairs of the patriarchal Meshulam Moskat and the unworldly Asa Heshel Bannet provide the center of the book, but its real focus is the civilization that was destroyed forever in the gas chambers of the Second World War.
Itās 1969. Women are fighting for equality. Rosalee, an insecure sculptor, and Fran, a best-selling novelist, have their issues. Will their bitter envy of each other and long-held secrets destroy their tenuous friendship? Or will Jill, Rosaleeās granddaughter, and the story behind her emerald necklace bind them together?
Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks spins a tale spanning continents and centuries as she fictionalizes the real history of the ancient Sarajevo Haggadah.
I found her writing gripping, and the story of rare book experts, intrigue, and treachery was fascinating. I loved seeing it through the eyes of her young protagonist, master art restorer Hanna Heath.
The bestselling novel that follows a rare manuscript through centuries of exile and war, from the author of The Secret Chord and of March, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called āa tour de forceā by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve thisā¦
In 1749, eighteen-year-old Anna del Monte was seized at gunpoint from her home in the Jewish ghetto of Rome and thrown into a convent cell at the Casa dei Convertiti, the house of converts. With no access to the outside world, she withstood endless lectures, threats, promises, isolation, and sleep deprivation. If she were to utter the simple word āyes,ā she risked forced baptism, which would mean never returning to her home and loss of contact with any Jewāmother, father, brother, sisterāfor the rest of her life.
Even in Rome, very few people know the story of the Ghetto or the abduction of Jews living in the long shadow of the Vatican.
The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpseā¦
Enter a captivating world where science fiction and thrilling suspense converge. After plummeting from the roof of Helix Unbound, Amanda awakens to a life devoid of memories. Desperately longing to fit in, yet sensing she harbors an extraordinary secret beneath her seemingly ordinary facade, she explores the unfamiliar world inā¦