reviews - Jewish Book Council

59 TH NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS
BIOGRAPHY, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND MEMOIR
In Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg
Winner:
THE FALL OF A SPARROW: THE LIFE
AND TIMES OF ABBA KOVNER
Dina Porat; Elizabeth Yuval, trans. & ed.
Stanford University Press
Abba Kovner’s picaresque life reads
like that of a character in a Jewish
novel: partisan, poet, writer, kibbutznik,
and Israel Prize winner. Kovner was an
active participant in both of the major
Jewish events of the 20th century: the war
against the Jews during World War II and
the War of Independence to establish the
State of Israel. Born in Sevastopol in 1918, a descendant of the Vilna
Gaon, he made Vilna his home. Kovner was the first to recognize
Hitler’s designs to murder all the European Jews and was a defender
of the Vilna ghetto. Escaping immediately before the ghetto was liquidated,
Kovner organized a partisan group and fought the Nazis from
the woods. While there, he formulated the tripartite strategy of bricha
(exodus from Europe), hativa (uniting the survivors) and nakam
(revenge). Kovner realized all three, including a fantastic plan to poison
large numbers of Germans, which resulted in him being deported
to Israel. He was an officer in the Givati Brigade and later became a
member of kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, living until 1987. Dina Porat, the
head of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of
Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel
Aviv University and translator Elizabeth Yuval, have
rendered an engrossing portrait of a thoughtful, traumatized
man of action whose life encapsulated the
perpetuity of the Jewish people. This is a story that
every Jew should know.
Finalists:
ROSENFELD’S LIVES: FAME, OBLIVION,
AND THE FURIES OF WRITING
Steven J. Zipperstein
Yale University Press
In Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and
the Furies of Writing, Steven J. Zipperstein
makes an impassioned and convincing
case for the importance of Isaac Rosenfeld,
a brilliant but anguished and sadly
forgotten 20th century writer of fiction,
essays, and literary criticism. Adopting the
unusual strategy of exploring why Rosenfeld,
a lifelong friend—and rival—of Saul Bellow’s,
never fully achieved his promise, Zipperstein sheds
light on an entire generation of New York Jewish
intellectuals and why Rosenfeld alone among them
fully embraced his Jewish identity in his writing.
Rosenfeld’s Lives is a moving tribute to a writer who
deserves to be honored alongside his peers.
8 Jewish Book World Spring 5770/2010
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE: MY
FAMILY’S JOURNEY TO AMERICA
Kati Marton
Simon & Schuster
Kati Marton’s unforgettable book is less
a memoir of the post-war world of the
1940’s and 1950’s, and more a candid,
courageous, and unsparing joint biography
of her brilliant and witty journalist parents,
Endre and Ilona Marton—prominent and
patriotic Hungarian Jews, who barely survived
the Nazis, but maintained a penchant
for dangerous risk-taking. For their brave and honest coverage of events
in Stalinist Hungary, and for their close and sometimes even reckless
relationships with many Americans in the diplomatic corps, the Martons
were subject to twenty years of total surveillance by the Hungarian
Secret Police (the AVO, which reported directly to the Soviet Secret
Service) who were aided by a wide circle of informers—including family
members recruited through intimidation. In 1955, the Martons
were imprisoned and interminably interrogated on trumped-up
charges of espionage. Miraculously released in 1956, apparently
through intense diplomatic pressure from the West, the Martons
rejoined eight-year-old Kati and her sister who had been living with
paid care-takers, and went back to work, covering the abortive Hungarian
revolution. Soon thereafter the family escaped to the U.S., where
they continued to live under the watchful eyes and pressures of the
AVO. Kati Marton has scoured the recently opened files of the AVO
and has used her findings to tell a disturbing story of life under totalitarianism.
Enemies of the State is comparable in its
psychological intensity to Arthur Koestler’s novel
Darkness at Noon, and in its philosophical sobriety to
George Konrad’s memoir, A Guest in My Own Country:
A Hungarian Life. She has written one of those
very rare works which combines meticulous research,
clear prose, and the authentic feel of a thriller.
CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
Winner:
THE OTHER HALF OF LIFE:
A NOVEL BASED ON THE TRUE
STORY OF THE MS ST. LOUIS
Kim Ablon Whitney
Knopf Books for Young Readers
In this captivating story based on the true
voyage of the MS St. Louis, Kim Ablon
Whitney takes young readers into a world
fraught with danger, espionage, and above
all, uncertainty about the future. It is 1939
and fifteen-year-old Thomas has to leave his
parents in Germany. His father, a Jew, has
been deported and his mother, a Christian, can no longer keep him safe
and their money is gone. Aboard ship, Thomas meets Priska, who is also
fleeing Germany but with her family intact. Thomas joins Priska’s
wealthy family for meals in first class and finds out “how the other half”
lives. They have many adventures en route to Cuba struggling to figure
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