Shalom Auslander

By the author of Foreskin's Lament, a novel of identity, tribalism, and mothers. Seventh Seltzer has done everything he can to break from the past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother's last moments he is drawn back into the life he left behind. At her deathbed, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: "Eat me." This is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions, both practical and emotional. Of practical concern, his dead mother is six-foot-two and weighs about four hundred and fifty pounds. Even divided up between Seventh and his eleven brothers, that's a lot of red meat. Plus Second keeps kosher, Ninth is vegan, First hated her, and Sixth is dead. To make matters worse, even if he can wrangle his brothers together for a feast, the Can-Am people have assimilated, and the only living Cannibal who knows how to perform the ancient ritual is their Uncle Ishmael, whose erratic understanding of their traditions leads to conflict. Seventh struggles with his mother's deathbed request. He never loved her, but the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels--to her and to his people and to his "unique cultural heritage"--is overwhelming. His mother always taught him he was a link in a chain, thousands of people long, stretching back hundreds of years. But, as his brother First says, he's getting tired of chains. Irreverent and written with Auslander's incomparable humor, Mother for Dinner is an exploration of legacy, assimilation, the things we owe our families, and the things we owe ourselves.

A Novel

Mother for Dinner

Relocating his family to an unremarkable rural town in New York in the hopes of starting over, Solomon Kugel must cope with his depressive mother, a local arsonist, and the discovery of a believed-dead historical specimen hiding in his attic.

A Tragedy : a Novel

Hope

An intimate account of the author's youth in a strict Orthodox community describes his dysfunctional family's vengeful personification of God, his exile to reform school after a childhood misdemeanor, and his efforts to make sense of his religious beliefs while connecting with the outside world. 30,000 first printing.

A Memoir

Foreskin's Lament

Shalom Auslander's stories in Beware of God have the mysterious punch of a dream. They are wide ranging and inventive: A young Jewish man's inexplicable transformation into a very large, blond, tattooed goy ends with an argument over whether or not his father can beat his unclean son with a copy of the Talmud. A pious man having a near-death experience discovers that God is actually a chicken, and he's forced to reconsider his life -- and his diet. At God's insistence, Leo Schwartzman searches Home Depot for supplies for an ark. And a young boy mistakes Holocaust Remembrance Day as emergency preparedness training for the future. Auslander draws upon his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York State to craft stories that are filled with shame, sex, God, and death, but also manage to be wickedly funny and poignant.

Stories

Beware of God

Fourteen short stories include the tales of a young Jewish man's transformation that tempts his father to beat him with a copy of the Talmud and a man's quest for ark supplies in a home improvement store.

A Dio spiacendo

una novela caníbal

Mamá para cenar

Jeune époux et futur papa, Shalom pourrait être le plus heureux des hommes. Mais l'enfance peut commettre bien des ravages... Élevé dans la plus stricte orthodoxie juive, il en a gardé une vision très personnelle du " Tout-Puissant " et une paranoïa aiguë. Trente-cinq ans que cela dure. Trente-cinq ans d'une relation complexe, faite d'incompréhension et de pure terreur. Alors, à l'adolescence, Shalom s'est rebellé : gavage de hot dogs, lectures pornos... Et il a attendu, tremblant, le châtiment divin. Mais rien... Aujourd'hui, la grossesse de sa femme le laisse désemparé. Partagé entre son désir d'émancipation et sa peur maladive de Dieu, le voilà confronté à l'agonisante question : quel sort doit-il réserver au prépuce de son enfant ?

La lamentation du prépuce

Cresciuto in una comunità ebrea ortodossa nello stato di New York, fra mille divieti e sotto la costante minaccia di un Dio vendicativo, Shalom Auslander ha fatto di tutto per affrancarsi da quell'ambiente, eppure si ritrova, anche da adulto, a lottare per scrollarsi di dosso la sua ossessione. Perché lui crede, e non può fare a meno di credere, in un Dio personale. È convinto che Dio ce l'abbia «personalmente» con lui: dai tempi delle prime disastrose esperienze con le ragazze, ai due anni trascorsi in una scuola religiosa di Gerusalemme per adolescenti ebrei irrequieti, fino ai mille traslochi insieme alla moglie alla ricerca della loro personale Terra Promessa, l'autore ripercorre le tappe di un percorso di formazione a ostacoli. Shalom Auslander ha scritto un memoir esilarante e dissacrante, il ritratto irresistibile di una famiglia e di una comunità, la storia di una ribellione (quasi) impossibile.

Il lamento del prepuzio

Solomon Kugel, un quasi quarantenne pieno di paure e ossessioni, decide di fuggire dalla città per trasferirsi con la moglie e il figlioletto a Stockton, nell'anonima provincia americana. Spera così di ricominciare da zero: di lasciarsi alle spalle i pericoli, le malattie, ma soprattutto il peso di un passato che non gli appartiene. La storia della sua gente. L'Olocausto. La guerra. Con loro c'è anche l'anziana madre di Kugel, ferocemente attaccata alla vita, ostinata nel negare la realtà e nel comportarsi come una superstite delle persecuzioni naziste, anche se è nata e cresciuta in America ed è stata solo una volta in un campo di concentramento - ma da turista. Come se non bastasse, un misterioso piromane minaccia l'incolumità degli abitanti della zona, appiccando il fuoco alle fattorie vicine. Niente di più angosciante, per un uomo che non riesce a scacciare il pensiero della morte e che tiene un taccuino per segnare le «ultime parole» da pronunciare nell'istante fatale. E tutto questo perché Kugel, in fondo, è un ottimista: ha un bisogno così disperato che le cose vadano meglio, che non riesce a smettere di pensare al peggio. Per di più, una notte Kugel sente degli strani rumori provenire dalla soffitta. C'è qualcuno. Una donna molto anziana, malata. Dice che sta scrivendo un libro, che se ne andrà quando lo avrà finito. Ironia della sorte, non si tratta di un inquilino qualunque: la donna dice di essere Anne Frank, sopravvissuta ai nazisti e nascosta lì da quarant'anni. L'assurdo irrompe così nella vita di Kugel, eroe tragicomico dell'inettitudine moderna, vessato dal proprio destino e divorato da una spirale di piccole e grandi catastrofi.

Prove per un incendio

Tama Janowitz

Yehuda Amichai

Susann Cokal

Paisley Rekdal

Dangerous Territory

Broad Street 1. 1

Seventh Seltzer has done everything he can to break from the past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother's last moments he is drawn back into the life he left behind. At her deathbed, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: "Eat me." This is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions, both practical and emotional. Of practical concern, his dead mother is six-foot-two and weighs about four hundred and fifty pounds. Even divided up between Seventh and his eleven brothers, that's a lot of red meat. Plus Second keeps kosher, Ninth is vegan, First hated her, and Sixth is dead. To make matters worse, even if he can wrangle his brothers together for a feast, the Can-Am people have assimilated, and the only living Cannibal who knows how to perform the ancient ritual is their Uncle Ishmael, whose erratic understanding of their traditions leads to conflict. Seventh struggles with his mother's deathbed request. He never loved her, but the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels--to her and to his people and to his "unique cultural heritage"--is overwhelming. His mother always taught him he was a link in a chain, thousands of people long, stretching back hundreds of years. But, as his brother First says, he's getting tired of chains. Irreverent and written with Auslander's incomparable humor, Mother for Dinner is an exploration of legacy, assimilation, the things we owe our families, and the things we owe ourselves.

A New York Times Notable Book, and a “chaotic, laugh riot” (San Francisco Chronicle) of a memoir. Shalom Auslander was raised with a terrified respect for God. Even as he grew up and was estranged from his community, his religion and its traditions, he could not find the path to a life where he didn’t struggle daily with the fear of God’s formidable wrath. Foreskin’s Lament reveals Auslander’s “painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious” youth in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox Jewish community, and recounts his rebellion and efforts to make a new life apart from it. His combination of unrelenting humor and anger renders a rich and fascinating portrait of a man grappling with his faith and family.

E se tivesse de comer a sua mãe para receber a sua herança? Antes do último suspiro, a mãe deste romance sussurra: «Come-me.» Os filhos da família Seltzer sabiam que ela o faria, mas não deixa de ser um último desejo desagradável, cruel até. Os doze irmãos Seltzers são canibal‐americanos, em tempos uma minoria étnica orgulhosa e florescente. Ao longo desta história, vão confrontar-se com os seus paradoxos, tradição, culpa, conflitos fraternais e a quantidade descomunal de carne que há para comer – e que sabe mal, porque «as mães sabem muito mal». Contudo, só assim poderão receber a sua herança.

Mãe para Jantar

Lamentaciones de un prepucio

In June, 2006, Picador launch Picador Shots, a new series of pocket-sized books priced at £1. The Shots aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some Picador's greatest authors. They will be contemporarily packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine. Shalom Auslander's two short stories from his collection, Beware of God, make up one of the first Picador Shots. 'Holocaust tips for Kids' is a deeply moving but hysterically funny story about a young boy who mistakes Holocaust rememberance day as Emergency preparedness training for the future whilst the 'Smithe the Heathens, Charlie Brown' is a serious look at the nature of racism and the Holocaust through the not so serious medium of Charlie Brown. Praise for Beware of God: "Beware of God is a fearlessly entertaining book, riffing on sex, death and shame, as well as some of the more solipsistic elements of Judaism. " Observer "The collection dazzles because it is skilfully outrageous in taking Judaism - and theism in general - well beyond its usual parameters." Financial Times

And, Smite the Heathens, Charlie Brown

Holocaust Tips for Kids

A New York Times Notable Book 2012 The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: no one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there. To begin again. To start anew. But it isn’t quite working out that way for Kugel… His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won’t stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one Kugel bought, and when, one night, he discovers history—a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history—hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse. Hope: A Tragedy is a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.

Shalom Auslander

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