Amos Oz: The Legacy of a Writer in Israel and Beyond edited by Ranen-Omer-Sherman, published by the State University of New York press 2023, pp.414 Amos Oz once said that he had two pens on his desk — one to write stories, the other ‘to tell the government to go to hell’. Today his voice … Read more
Review of Emil Draitser’s In the Jaws of a Crocodile: A Soviet Memoir, published by the University of Wisconsin Press 2021, pp.276 What’s a Purim miracle? A Jewish boy getting into Moscow University! Charlie Chaplin once commented that ‘to truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it’. For Jews, … Read more
How to break through the barrier of ‘nonsense’ ‘publishing Benjamin Disraeli once had one of his fictional characters point out that books are the curse of the human race. In “Lothair,” it was Mr Phoebus who said: “Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The … Read more