What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Zusatztext 51110630 Informationen zum Autor Nathan Englander Klappentext From the Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, eight powerful stories, dazzling in their display of language and imagination.From the title story, a provocative portrait of two marriages inspired by Raymond Carver's masterpiece, to "Peep Show" and "How We Avenged the Blums," two stories that return to the author's classic themes of sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity, these stories affirm Nathan Englander's place at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank They’re in our house maybe ten minutes and already Mark’s lecturing us on the Israeli occupation. Mark and Lauren live in Jerusalem, and people from there think it gives them the right.   Mark is looking all stoic and nodding his head. “If we had what you have down here in South Florida . . . ,” he says, and trails off. “Yup,” he says, and he’s nodding again. “We’d have no troubles at all.”   “You do have what we have,” I tell him. “All of it. Sun and palm trees. Old Jews and oranges and the worst drivers around. At this point,” I say, “we’ve probably got more Israelis than you.” Debbie, my wife, she puts a hand on my arm. Her signal that I’m taking a tone, or interrupting someone’s story, sharing something private, or making an inappropriate joke. That’s my cue, and I’m surprised, considering how much I get it, that she ever lets go of my arm.   “Yes, you’ve got it all now,” Mark says. “Even terrorists.”   I look to Lauren. She’s the one my wife has the relation- ship with—the one who should take charge. But Lauren isn’t going to give her husband any signal. She and Mark ran off to Israel twenty years ago and turned Hassidic, and neither of them will put a hand on the other in public. Not for this. Not to put out a fire.    “Wasn’t Mohamed Atta living right here before 9/11?” Mark says, and now he pantomimes pointing out houses. “Goldberg, Goldberg, Goldberg—Atta. How’d you miss him in this place?”   “Other side of town,” I say.   “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what you have that we don’t. Other sides of town. Wrong sides of the tracks. Space upon space.” And now he’s fingering a granite countertop in our kitchen, looking out into the living room and the dining room, staring through the kitchen windows out at the pool. “All this house,” he says, “and one son? Can you imagine?”   “No,” Lauren says. And then she turns to us, backing him up. “You should see how we live with ten.”   “Ten kids,” I say. “We could get you a reality show with that here in the States. Help you get a bigger place.”   The hand is back pulling at my sleeve. “Pictures,” Debbie says. “I want to see the girls.” We all follow Lauren into the den for her purse.   “Do you believe it?” Mark says. “Ten girls!” And the way it comes out of his mouth, it’s the first time I like the guy. The first time I think about giving him a chance.   ...   Facebook and Skype brought Deb and Lauren back together. They were glued at the hip growing up. Went to school together their whole lives. Yeshiva school. All girls. Out in Queens through high school and then riding the subway together to one called Central in Manhattan. They stayed best friends forever until I married Deb and turned her secular, and soon after that Lauren met Mark and they went off to the Holy Land and went from Orthodox to ultra -Orthodox, which to me sounds like a repackaged detergent—ORTHODOX ULTRA®, now with more deep-healing power. Because of that, we’re sup- posed to call them Shoshana and Yerucham. Deb’s been doing it. I’m just not saying their names.   “You want some water?” I offer. “Coke in the can?” “   ‘You’—which of us?” Mark says.   “ You bot...

Relazione

Showcases Mr. Englander s extraordinary gifts as a writer. Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

I m in love. For evidence that collections can be just as satisfying, read as deep, if not deeper, and beat with as much life and insight as a hulking novel, look no further. Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

Audacious and idiosyncratic, darkly clever and brightly faceted. San Francisco Chronicle
 
Terrific. . . . When is a short story mightier than a novel? When its elisions speak as loudly as its lines. Englander knows where to hold back, a particular gift when writing about and around the martyr of his title, the locked up and locked in. A kind of hard-won wisdom spills out on every page. Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review

Imaginatively powerful. . . . What makes the stories resonate long after their final paragraphs is Englander s odd coupling of the morally serious and the deliciously comic. . . . His second collection of short stories more than fulfills the large promises of his first. What do we do when we talk about Englander? We talk about how he has become a master storyteller. The Miami Herald

Humane, philosophically provocative. . . . Each story in the book is essentially a parable, and Englander s special talent is to burnish his parables with a patina of persuasive realism. . . . Characters tell (and re-tell) stories within stories, and seek to understand themselves by means of narrative, in a way that seems quintessentially, satisfyingly Jewish. Boston Globe

Englander is at his best. . . . He never writes less than gorgeously, but when, from narrow confines, he puts his finger on the universal, he s Shakespeare. Bloomberg News

Nathan Englander is a master at putting remarks into the mouths of ordinary people that distill entire streams of politics and religion. . . . They ring true and are a funny, chilling, joy to read. The Plain Dealer

Profound and magical. . . . These eight masterful stories also continue the work of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud authors who mined the Jewish-American experience with tremendous humor, humanity and healthy amounts of guilt. USA Today

What Englander is saying is that we know ourselves, or don t, on different levels, that we exist individually and as part of a heritage. . . . Who will hide us? Who are we, really? How do ritual and culture intersect? Such questions exist at the heart of this accomplished collection, in which stories are what make us who we are. Los Angeles Times

Nathan Englander writes the stories I am always hoping for, searching for. These are stories that transport you into other lives, other dreams. This is deft, engrossing, deeply satisfying work. Englander is, to me, the modern master of the form. And this collection is the very best. Geraldine Brooks

Grade A. . . . Virtuosic. . . . Each of these meticulously chiseled stories contains a hidden stinger that throws the reader for a wicked loop. . . . These are stories that give you goose bumps. Entertainment Weekly

Englander s latest short story collection marks him out as one of the finest American writers of his generation. Financial Times

It takes an exceptional combination of moral humility and moral assurance to integrate fine-grained comedy and large-scale tragedy as daringly as Nathan Englander does. Jonathan Franzen

The stories are so tightly wrought, the sentences laid out so cleanly, the dialogue so real and the humor so self-lacerating. . . . If Mr. Englander is in fact the future of Jewish-American prose, then that future looks to be a far more moral and compassionate one than the writing of the recent past. . . . the humor and the brilliance, and the investigation of cultural identity, are all still there. The New York Observer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank is Nathan Englander s wisest, funniest, bravest, and most beautiful book. It overflows with revelations and gems. Jonathan Safran Foer

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Nathan Englander
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 05.03.2013
• EAN: 9780307949608
• ISBN: 978-0-307-94960-8
• Pagine: 240
• Dimensioni: 130 mm x 203 mm x 18 mm
• Serie: VINTAGE BOOKS; Vintage; Vintage
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi