The Schocken Book of Contemporary Jewish Fiction

by Nessa Rapoport and Ted Solotaroff

Book Overview

This landmark anthology brings together some of the best stories written in the last thirty years by and about American Jews. Saul Bellow tells a brutal coming-of-age story set in Chicago; Mark Helprin recalls a stint in the Israeli army during the Six-Day War; Grace Paley explores the complex relationship between Jews and Blacks; Philip Roth muses on what life would have been like for Kafka if he had come to America, and maybe dated Roth's aunt From...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805210652
• ISBN13: 9780805210651
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (No Starch)
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Not the best of the best

This anthology has among its contributors the greatest of all Jewish American writers of the short- story, I.B. Singer, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malmud, Cynthia Ozick. It also contains selections from other well- known Jewish writers, Grace Paley, Max Apple, Allegra Goodman, and others. It does not however in my judgment contain the greatest of 'Jewish stories' written in America. It does not contain Singer's'Gimpel' or his 'Spinoza of Market Street' or any of his truly greatest stories. It does not contain Bellow's best, or Roth's best or Ozick's best. An anthology of consolation- prizes in this regard. There is much worth reading here, but the greatest American- Jewish story stuff is not here.