Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
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Life Is Alexander Portnoy White?
It’s struck me lately that the American writer perhaps most deeply associated with White Male Writer-ness is one who made his name writing fiction about identity. Google “Philip Roth” and “white male” and you find an endless stream of essays that offer up Roth as a prime example of the white male literary novelist. As…
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Breaking News Novelist Etgar Keret Says He Doesn’t Publish in Hebrew Because Privacy
— The celebrated novelist Etgar Keret said he refrains from publishing some of his works in Hebrew to protect the privacy of his family, upon whom he bases some of his writing. Keret, who in 1996 received Israel’s Prime Minister Award for Literature, among other distinctions, revealed this during a talk last week before Russian…
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Life Trump’s Literary Accomplishments, Assessed
Samantha Bee offers up the not-implausible possibility that Donald Trump can’t read. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post has the scoop on a novel Trump had gotten ghostwritten, but that no longer bears his byline. It’s “an incredibly sexist novel,” according to HuffPo’s Todd Van Luling. Were we expecting it to be any other kind? Phoebe Maltz…
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The Schmooze You’ll Never Guess Which Israeli Authors President Obama Loves
We’ve always known President Obama is, at heart, a lovable nerd. Soon we’ll get even more proof; the president guest-edited the November edition of WIRED, which the magazine’s editor in chief Scott Dadich recently wrote will be focused on frontiers, including “the final one, because it turns out President Obama is a big Star Trek…
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Breaking News Catskills Bookstore Sparks Protests by Comparing Donald Trump to Nazis
— An upstate New York bookstore display containing the name “Trump” superimposed over a Nazi flag has spurred outrage, including from the Anti-Defamation League and supporters of the Republican nominee. Some 20 protesters demonstrated Wednesday outside the Inquiring Minds Bookstore and Cafe in the village of Saugerties against the banner, which also read “Make America Hate Again.” Some demonstrators…
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Life Ferrante and the Freedom of the Jewish Woman Author
It’s neat, in a way, that Elena Ferrante’s Jewish. Well, not Ferrante—the author behind the pseudonym. Anita Raja, the Italian translator whom Claudio Gatti has convincingly argued is Elena Ferrante, is, as Gatti recently explained in detail in the New York Review of Books, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Whether we think it’s terrible…
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Food A Memoir of Treyf Truthtelling
“There’s always more to all of us,” Elissa Altman explained to me over the phone when talking about the impetus for her second memoir, “Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw,” which is out next week. Altman — a cookbook editor, food writer and James Beard Foundation award-winning author of the blog Poor Man’s Feast…
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Food Susie Fishbein Says Goodbye to Iconic ‘Kosher By Design’ Series
(JTA) — When Susie Fishbein wrote her first “Kosher By Design” cookbook nearly 15 years ago, she saw an opening in the market for a book in the style of mainstream cooks like Ina Garten and Martha Stewart. “Those were my idols,” she told JTA. As such, Fishbein dreamed of writing a kosher cookbook that…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Fast Forward Meet Lev Kreitman, who brought down Tel Aviv shooter and survived Nova music festival on Oct. 7
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Trump visits gravesite of Lubavitcher Rebbe to mark Oct. 7 anniversary
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Fast Forward Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff plant a pomegranate tree for Oct. 7 victims
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Forverts in English How can Jews committed to Yiddish culture call a massacre of Jews ‘resistance’?
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Fast Forward Suspect arrested in U of Michigan rabbi’s home robbery, with no evidence of antisemitic intent
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