on Jews and Fantasy Literature
Frank Herbert’s Dune, often named as the greatest science fiction novel ever written, turns 50 this year. Set thousands of years in the future, the novel and its sequels portray a universe in which religion is a powerful influence, yet in which the religions of our own time—Christianity, Islam, Buddhism—are scrambled, changed at times almost … Continue reading Jews of Dune
On March 19, 2012, a French jihadi on a shooting spree targeted a Jewish school in Toulouse, murdering three children and a rabbi. A few days later, a Jewish cemetery in Nice was defaced. Both events were on the mind of comic book creator Joann Sfar as he resumed work on the final book of … Continue reading Drawing Conclusions: Joann Sfar and the Jews of France
Israeli reviewers have repeatedly invoked the word “ambitious” to describe Reuven Namdar’s Hebrew novel, Habayit asher neḥerav (“The House That Was Destroyed”), which in January won the Sapir prize, Israel’s equivalent of Britain’s Man Booker award. The term is richly deserved. In The House That Was Destroyed, Namdar, an Israeli of Persian descent who for the … Continue reading An Israeli Writer’s Great American Novel
investigations and fantasies 