Writers over forty make their debut • My mother and the optician • Prayer in many languages • What’s with all the Holocaust novels?
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Fictionalized Holocaust narratives are overrunning the bookstores. Why now?
"Young writers” and “30 under 30” lists abound in every field. Doesn’t it seem a little unfair?
When her mother took her to the optician, she perceived more than the adults imagined.
What happens when something innovative or revolutionary becomes accepted as normal, and the new norm then becomes the basis for fresh exploration?
Why is this story, which whitewashes antisemitism, being taught in so many schools? Its new sequel provides no easy answers.
I didn’t want to throw the dagger out, because it was important to my mother. I didn’t want to sell it, and I didn’t want to keep it.
Is it my place to keep poking at my foremothers’ secrets and exposing them to the criticism they dreaded?
"Daddy speaks no English and was put into jail as a suspected spy. And here we are, on the Isle of Man until someone vouches for him..."
Overwhelmingly, though, the novels that I read for this assignment were deeply respectful of the horrors that spawned their creation.
