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Books

Books

My novel shows that Jews and Scots have more in common than you may think

Jenni Daiches’s family saga is on the longlist for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction

By Jenni Frazer

5 min read

Displacement theme: Jenni Daiches and her new book

Are we really so special? Two new works take on the great Jewish identity debate

Are we really so special? Two new works take on the great Jewish identity debate

Two authors, a sociologist and an academic, have written books about the modern Jewish experience. One is partisan, the other is rigorously methodical...

5 min read

Fable-like tragicomedy: Manya Wilkinson and her book

Manya Wilkinson: ‘I wanted to write an edgy novel about the shtetl’

This year’s Wingate winner on her tragicomedy Lublin and lost family history

By Jennifer Lipman

6 min read

The Chasidic stories that anticipate the parables of Franz Kafka

The Chasidic stories that anticipate the parables of Franz Kafka

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav was one of the great Chasidic writers of the early modern period, and this Pushkin Press translation of his tales of rabbis, robbers, princes and paradoxes is a treasure

By David Herman

1 min read

The Prosecutor review: ‘the Jew who put his country on trial’

This is a monumental biography of Fritz Bauer, the German-Jewish lawyer who went back to Deutschland to see justice done

By Jenni Frazer

2 min read

Jewish Book Week 2025

The Friday Night Dinner writer on his latest ‘mad creative adventure’

Jewish sitcom supremo Robert Popper’s most recent work is about a 104-year-old widow who cannot stop writing letters

By Imogen Garfinkel

5 min read

Children's books

The best new books for toddlers, teens and those in between

From a children’s tale set in Burma to a Purim board book, our pick of the best new releases for children

By Angela Kiverstein

1 min read

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More from Books

Jewish Book Week 2025

Israeli writers under siege reflect on the world since October 7

Yossi Klein Halevy, Amir Tibon and Ayelet Tsabari are speaking at Jewish Book Week on March 2

By Lianne Kolirin

7 min read

Ayelet Tsabari

33 Place Brugmann review: ‘secrets, betrayal and courage in occupied Brussels’

From RAF pilots and members of the resistance risking their lives, to Jewish refugee nurses caring for the desperately wounded, this American playwright’s first novel is packed with twists and turns

By David Herman

1 min read

33 Place Brugmann review: ‘secrets, betrayal and courage in occupied Brussels’

A Fool’s Kabbalah review: ‘Is comedy a valid response the Shoah?’

Readers must decide for themselves if this challenging novel is a valid response to the nihilism inherent in the Holocaust

2 min read

A Fool’s Kabbalah review: ‘Is comedy a valid response the Shoah?’

‘For Peter Beinart, focusing on the right of Jews to be secure from terrorists is immoral’

Stephen Pollard reviews Peter Beinart’s new book Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza

By Stephen Pollard

3 min read

‘For Peter Beinart, focusing on the right of Jews to be secure from terrorists is immoral’

Do the affluent and over-educated have problems?

This novel satirises the non-problems of privileged Americans with great humour and skill

By Jennifer Lipman

2 min read

Do the affluent and over-educated have problems?

The German Jew who fought his way through Europe to find his parents at Theresienstadt

This most dramatic of war stories has the makings of a marvellous TV series

2 min read

The German Jew who fought his way through Europe to find his parents at Theresienstadt

The Last Days of Budapest review: ‘intrigue, horror and heroism in the Casablanca of central Europe’

Journalist Adam LeBor’s latest book quotes a wide range of newly revealed diaries and letters, and relates some remarkable tales of Jews being rescued

By Monica Porter

2 min read

Brutality on parade: Jews being rounded up in Budapest in 1944. Right: the writer's new book

The Teacher of Auschwitz review: ‘he helped Jewish children survive hell’

Wendy Holden has brought Fredy Hirsch, a young gay man who saved hundreds of children from Nazi depredations, to life

By Jenni Frazer

2 min read

The Teacher of Auschwitz review: ‘he helped Jewish children survive hell’

The non-Jewish Italian who saved Primo Levi

A new biography sheds light on an unsung hero consigned to work at the death camp where the great author was interned

By Amanda Hopkinson

2 min read

The non-Jewish Italian who saved Primo Levi

This columnist is derided and even hated, but she is usually right

In her latest polemic Melanie Phillips takes on the ruin of Western civilisation

By Stephen Pollard

3 min read

Vital voice: Melanie Phillips and her new book

The Power and the Glory review: ‘Jews who wished they were to the manor born’

This literary tour through the flamboyant Jewish-owned stately homes of the turn of the 20th century is highly entertaining

By Jenni Frazer

3 min read

The Power and the Glory review: ‘Jews who wished they were to the manor born’

Children's books

The best new books for toddlers, teens and those in between

From the world of JSocs and casual antisemitism to the fictionalised story of a real-life story Jewish heroine in 16th century Portugal, our pick of the best new releases for children

By Angela Kiverstein

1 min read

The best new books for toddlers, teens and those in between

East Broadway to Whitechapel, review: ‘stirring snapshots of a bygone world’

David Katz’s short stories are a moving evocation of the Jewish world of Brooklyn and the East End, but also the world of Yiddish literature

By David Herman

2 min read

East Broadway to Whitechapel, review: ‘stirring snapshots of a bygone world’

Singer Sisters review: ‘gentle notes on the gritty business of making music’

The music reverberates from the pages of this feminist journalist’s debut novel

By Jennifer Lipman

1 min read

Singer Sisters review: ‘gentle notes on the gritty business of making music’

Why the longest hatred isn’t going anywhere soon

This new study on contemporary antisemtism is a welcome addition to the canon

2 min read

Big question: why did the left excuse Hamas's actions on October 7?

2024 in review: Jewish books

From the Shoah to the screwed-up elite, the five stand-out Jewish books of the year are a mix of eviscerating fiction, assiduously researched history and memoir

By Claire Allfree

2 min read

2024 in review: Jewish books

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