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King of Yiddish Curt Leviant Available December, 2015 |
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Synopsis:
A
serio-comic novel that tells of Shmulik Gafni, a professor of
Yiddish. Two narratives contrast: One: Gafni’s extended search
in Poland for the man who murdered his father in the notorious
Kielce pogrom. Two: Gafni’s infatuation with Malina, a pretty
non-Jewish Polish linguist in Jerusalem to study Yiddish. Guess
who her private tutor is? Rumors fly.
ISBN: 978-1-60489-161-4 Hard cover $30.00 Sale $15.00 ISBN: 978-1-60489-160-7 Trade paper $18.95 Sale $8.50 312 Pages |
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About
the Author: Curt Leviant is author of nine critically acclaimed works of fiction.
He has won the Edward Lewis
Wallant Award and writing fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the
Jerusalem Foundation, the Emily Harvey Foundation in
Venice, and the New Jersey Arts Council. His work has been included in
Best American
Short Stories, Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards,
and other anthologies – and praised by two Nobel
laureates: Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel. With the publication of Curt
Leviant’s novels into French, Italian, Spanish, Greek,
Rumanian and other languages – some of which have become
international best sellers – reviewers have hailed his
books as masterpieces and compared his imaginative
fiction to that of Nabokov, Borges, Kafka, Italo
Calvino, Vargas Llosa, Harold Pinter, and Tolstoy The French version of
Diary of
an Adulterous
Woman was singled out as one of the Twenty Best
Books of the Year in France and among the seven best
novels. The French version of
Kafka’s
Son was hailed on French television as a “work of
genius” and by French critics as “a masterpiece”.
One French reviewer said that the novel was.... But the most memorable praise
has come from Chauncey Mabe, Book Editor of South
Florida’s
Sun-Sentinel, who wrote: “Curt Leviant is one of the greatest novelists you’ve never heard of. His serio-comic novels, including Diary of an Adulterous Woman (the best novel I’ve read during the past ten years), should place him in company with Joseph Heller or even Saul Bellow…”
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Excerpt from the Book: |
Somewhere in Chapter 7 of the great
poet-philosopher Yehuda Halevi’s masterwork, The
Kuzari, the author states that men want always to be
someone else: workers, poets: doctors,
soldiers; barbers, waggoners. And everyone, he
continues, wants to be somewhere else. If
you’re here, you want to be there; if you’ve reached
there, you want to be back here again.
Landlubbers want to sail the seas; sailors long to
farm the land. Ditto Shmulik Gafni.
A simple professor of Yiddish was he, yet he yearned
to be active in world politics, to be at the center
of events. And that meant only one thing.
American politics and the American president.
Then one day his wish came true. It was only after
dreaming for months that he was at presidential
press conferences, sitting in the back, not saying a
word, just happy to be there, hoping that in some
good-luck magical way his innate wisdom would be
discovered, that he decided to become a presidential
advisor. Shmulik Gafni got his
first opportunity to engage with world history
during the Cuban missile crisis. His advice to
John F. Kennedy came from his experience in the
Israel Defense Forces where he served as a major.
Act, never react. While others advised JFK to
tough it out, make strong pronouncements at first,
verbal threats later. In other words, while
the Russian missile ships were heading for Cuba,
wage a war of words and warnings with press
conferences and lots of blather. Gafni advised simply:
They’re sending ships. We’ll send ships. Move
a flotilla of four battleships and two aircraft
carriers loaded with jets and accompanying warships
westward to meet the eastbound Russian missile
ships. Gafni predicted – correctly – they'll turn
around well before the US Navy draws near, much less
fire a shot. His career as a
presidential advisor was made.
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