Fiction. Jewish Studies. Tonia moves with her family from Poland to British Mandate Palestine, first to her uncle's small apartment in Tel Aviv and later to the kibbutz that her father Josef helped to establish. Due to the hardships of life in the kibbutz and against the backdrop of what is happening in Nazi-occupied Europe, she longs for security and comfort. Amos is a handsome and exotic Yemenite who fights in the Jewish underground, to which Tonia's father is vehemently opposed. Despite their different backgrounds, Tonia and Amos fall in love.This budding romance is interrupted by the siege of Tonia's home, Kfar Etzion. Tonia finally achieves her dream and moves to Michigan in the US, hoping her family will follow her. But is this where she belongs? The desperate fight is described very movingly and it is the first fictionalized account of the true story of the siege and fall of the Etzion Bloc.

The Lonely Tree

Literature & Fiction

Politis, Yael

Contemporary

Holland Park Press

Everything Must Go

Rosie Garland

Poetry. Jewish Studies. Music. TO SING AWAY THE DARKEST DAYS is the culmination of a five-year project which saw Norbert Hirschhorn source more than one thousand Yiddish songs. Ruth Rubin, pioneer archivist of Yiddish folksong, wrote: "Yiddish folksongs are in a vernacular closest to the popular speech of the folk." For Hirschhorn they helped him to rediscover and trace his own Jewish cultural history. However, some of the songs 'spoke' to him as a poet and begged for a new translation—or 're-imagining' as he calls it—into English poems. The resulting collection of poems tells the story of the emigrant, the Jew in the Diaspora. Norbert adds his unique view: he personalizes the Diaspora, and at the same time brings a vanished culture back to life. The collection is funny and poignant and captures the Jewish experience, but the struggle and questioning of the poet add an extra dimension.

To Sing Away The Darkest Days - Poems Re-imagined from Yiddish Folksongs

Hirschhorn, Norbert

Poetry

Fiction. Art History. HOLD STILL is set in 1860s London and Paris, and is a fictional account of a short period in the life of Joanna Hiffernan, the muse and model of both James Whistler and Gustave Courbet. Cherry Smyth has created an enthralling picture of what must have been a remarkable woman. How did a young girl, just seventeen when she met Jim Whistler, admittedly with beautiful red hair, and a vivid personality, inspire talented painters to create wonderful paintings: Whistler's Symphony in White, No.1: The White Girl and Courbet's La Belle Irlandaise which made their names? HOLD STILL tells the story from Jo's point of view. Her father instills in her a sense of self and Jo grows up to be a free spirit, a suffragette avant la lettre. Read HOLD STILL for an interpretation of Courbet's notorious The Origin of the World's genesis, with a highly plausible explanation of the absent head and face of the model.

Hold Still

Smyth, Cherry

Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies. Jewish Studies. In 2009, prompted by the Israeli siege of Gaza, Palestinian- American poet Deema Shehabi and Jewish-American poet Marilyn Hacker started a correspondence. It took the form of responding to each other's poems. They continued their poetic dialogue by email until 2012. The result was a sequence of renga called DIASPO/RENGA. The two poetic voices are beautifully meshed together, so that it actually reads as one long poem. The poetry is very rich in imagery, and these images stay with you, as do feelings the poems generate, for example, of unrest, of being in exile. Television shows you the pictures in the streets, this poetry takes you into the homes and minds of people. DIASPO/RENGA is a dignified celebration of humanity in and among atrocities. Although triggered by events in Gaza, it cleverly weaves in other conflicts past and present.

Diaspo/Renga

HACKER, MARILYN

Shehabi, Deema K.

Away from the Dead

Jennings, Karen

Fiction. THE STRAY AMERICAN beautifully captures the sense of rootlessness and search for identity. Set in 2003, Larry Greenberg escapes from his corporate law job in Boston to teach in a seedy American college near London's Waterloo Station. He lives alone in Wimbledon, and his British lovers want him out of their beds before the morning. Then he meets Carla who lets him stay the night, but who has to face her own demons. His search for companionship takes him to the Un-Americans, a tiny group of disaffected expatriate Americans. Though repelled by these eccentrics, he stays for Devorah, a dancer whose radical politics he tries to ignore. He has always been rootless, unwilling to commit himself to a job or woman or cause. If he grows up, must he shed his wings? Is he condemned to forever consider himself to be an outsider? Follow Larry, a flawed but engaging character, on his journey in search of a soul mate and a sense of purpose.

The Stray American

Brandmark, Wendy

Poetry. Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent and John Irons. 100 DUTCH-LANGUAGE POEMS is a lovely selection of poems written in the Dutch language from the 11th century to the present day. For the poetry lover it is a comprehensive introduction to poetry from the Low Countries and provides a wonderful insight into the themes and issues that influenced generations of poets. The Dutch language and English translations are presented side by side making it a great resource for literature and language students and scholars. A detailed foreword by Paul Vincent and John Irons who selected and translated the poems, as well as an intriguing afterword by Gaston Franssen, assistant professor of Literary Culture at the University of Amsterdam, add additional value to this necessary anthology. PAUL VINCENT  Paul received a BA (Hons) Modern Languages (German, Dutch, French) from University of Cambridge, UK in 1964. He undertook Postgraduate study at the University of Amsterdam during 1965-1966. He was awarded an MA from University of Cambridge in 1968.  From 1967 to 1989 he was a full time Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Dutch Language and Literature at Bedford College, University of London, and afterwards at University College London. He left his academic career in 1989 to become a freelance translator of Dutch and German into English. He has translated many of the leading authors and poets from the Low Countries including Louis Couperus, Harry Mulisch, Willem Elsschot, Louis Paul Boon and Hugo Claus.  He was the recipient of the first David Reid Poetry Translation Prize for the translation of Hendrik Marsman's famous poem 'Herinnering aan Holland' (Memory of Holland) in 2006, awarded by the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.  In 2012 Paul Vincent received the Vondel Prize for My Little War, his translation of Mijn kleine oorlog by Louis Paul Boon, published by Dalkey Archive. Paul Vincent is based in London.  JOHN IRONS John Irons studied Modern & Medieval Languages (German, French, & Dutch) at Cambridge University and completed his PhD, The Development of Imagery in the Poetry of PC Boutens, at the same university.  He worked as a senior lecturer at Odense University in Denmark. He has been a professional translator, from Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, German and French to English, since 1987. He was awarded the NORLA translation prize for non-fiction in 2007.  John Irons has worked on a long and distinguished list of publications and he has been a translator for Poetry International Rotterdam since 1996. He has translated several of the leading authors and poets from the Low Countries including anthologies of Dutch-language poets Hugo Claus and Gerrit Komrij. John Irons lives in Odense, Denmark.  http://johnirons.blogspot.co.uk/

100 Dutch-Language Poems - From the Medieval Period to the Present Day

History & Criticism

Fiction. Translated by Asja Novak. THE YELLOW HOUSE paints a fictional picture of Vincent van Gogh's life between August 1888 and December 1889 when he lived in Arles in Southern France and where he created many of his masterpieces. Jeroen Blokhuis tells the story from van Gogh's point of view, from inside his mind, providing a fresh and revealing look at how this intriguing painter worked. At this point, van Gogh has fled from the dark sombre Netherlands of his youth, from Paris, and even from his best friend and beloved brother Theo, in search of the light, the sun of the South. The yellow house in Place Lamartine becomes his refuge, but what about his hope of setting up an atelier with other painters, of making friends, and having a sense of belonging?   "Blokhuis describes a Vincent soaked in colour and alcohol akin to a just- finished painting soaked in oil."—Literair Nederland   "The novel captivates you through the direct way in which Blokhuis portrays his character. With the same intense roughness with which Vincent van Gogh threw paint onto a canvas."—Rein Swart   "Vincent van Gogh's desperation and anger are beautifully translated into sentences full of action."—Vera ter Beest

The Yellow House, A Novel about Vincent van Gogh

Blokhuis, Jeroen

Genre Fiction

Fiction. HE RUNS THE MOON is a collection of atmospheric stories of life in the rundown Capitol Hill area of Denver, the Bronx and Boston during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Brandmark, a great storyteller in the American tradition, draws you in. Take the Denver stories which form a narrative of a Gothic city populated by people who feel they don't quite belong. In one story creative writing students are all secretly in love with their professor but does he register them at all?  Figures from the 'old world' haunt the children and adults in the Jewish community of New York City. A troubled granny with a head that is bothering her, and the 'witch' in the basement flat, who has dark marks on her arm.  In the Boston tales characters piece together dreams from the fragments of their lives. Be transported to the occupational hazards of sharing rooms in a dull green clapboard house which seemed to pitch and heave.

He Runs the Moon, Tales from the Cities

United States

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