Steve Stern

A wild, effervescent, absinthe-soaked novel that tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutine Steve Stern’s astonishing new novel The Village Idiot begins on a glorious spring day in Paris 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists of the age have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated regally in a bathtub pulled by a flock of canvasback ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has a secret advantage: his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub from underwater. Soutine, an unwashed, misfit artist (who incidentally can’t swim) has been persuaded by the Italian to don a ponderous diving suit and trudge along the floor of the river Seine. Disoriented and confused by the artificial air in his helmet Chaim stumbles through the events of his past and future life. It’s quite an extraordinary life. From his impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl to his equally destitute days in Paris during the Années Folles, the Crazy Years, from the Cinderella patronage of the American collector Albert Barnes, who raises him from poverty to international attention, to his perilous flight from the Nazi occupation of France, Chaim Soutine remains driven by his unrelenting passion to paint. To be sure, there are notable distractions, such as his unlikely friendship with Modigliani, who drags him from brothels to midnight felonies to a duel at dawn; there are the romances with remarkable women who compete with and sometimes salvage his obsession. But there is also, always on the horizon, the coming storm that threatens to sweep away Chaim and a generation of gifted Jewish refugees from a tradition that would outlaw their longing to make art. Wildly inventive, as funny as it is heart-breaking, The Village Idiot is a luminous fever-dream of a novel, steeped in the heady atmosphere of a Paris that was the cultural capital of the universe, a place where anything seemed possible.

The Village Idiot

The last Jewish tenant on North Main Street in Memphis, Lenny Sklarew, makes the startling discovery that he's a character in a book about his neighborhood, and the stories he finds within the book transform both himself and the fate of the Pinch.

A Novel

The Pinch

"In the 25 years since [Stern] published his first book, younger Jewish writers have run with a similar shtick . . . But Stern was there first." --The Toronto Globe and Mail The Book of Mischief triumphantly showcases twenty-five years of outstanding work by one of our true masters of the short story. Steve Stern's stories take us from the unlikely old Jewish quarter of the Pinch in Memphis to a turn-of-thecentury immigrant community in New York; from the market towns of Eastern Europe to a down-at-the-heels Catskills resort. Along the way we meet a motley assortment of characters: Mendy Dreyfus, whose bungee jump goes uncannily awry; Elijah the prophet turned voyeur; and the misfit Zelik Rifkin, who discovers the tree of dreams. Perhaps it's no surprise that Kafka's cockroach also makes an appearance in these pages, animated as they are by instances of bewildering transformation. The earthbound take flight, the meek turn incendiary, the powerless find unwonted fame. Weaving his particular brand of mischief from the wondrous and the macabre, Stern transforms us all through the power of his brilliant imagination.

New and Selected Stories

The Book of Mischief

The Angel of Forgetfulness

In a boxcar crammed with Jews headed for a concentration camp, one man attempts to tell a story vital enough to displace the horror.

The North of God

The Moon & Ruben Shein

This time-defying odyssey from the 1960s to the Lower East Side of New York at the turn of the 20th century features a detour through heaven on the wings of a derelict angel.

A collection of Jewish stories, set in Europe and America, some presented with magic realism. Subjects include relations with Christians and conflict between religion and the secular.

The Wedding Jester

A collection of tales set in Pinch, a Jewish community perched on a river bluff above Memphis. Here, wonderful and strange things happen: the angel of death visits in a blue serge suit; the voice of God commands Morton Gruber to collaborate on a book; and an aunt goes on a celestial blind date.

Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven

A dazzling, spellbinding novel set in a mythical Jewish community by the acclaimed author of the New York Times Notable Book The Book of Mischief It's the late 1960s. The Pinch, once a thriving Jewish community centered on North Main Street in Memphis, has been reduced to a single tenant. Lenny Sklarew awaits the draft by peddling drugs and shelving books—until he learns he is a character in a book about the rise and fall of this very Pinch. Muni Pinsker, who authored the book in an enchanted day containing years, arrived in the neighborhood at its height and was smitten by an alluring tightrope walker. Muni's own story is dovetailed by that of his uncle Pinchas Pin, whose epic journey to North Main Street forms the book's spine. Steve Stern interweaves these tales with an ingenious structure that merges past with present, and his wildly inventive fabulism surpasses everything he's done before. Together, these intersecting stories transform the real-world experience of Lenny, whose fate determines the future of the Pinch, in this brilliant, unforgettable novel.

When floods leave town cemeteries unfit for his grandmother's burial and with his parents distracted, young Harry slips out nights to explore Memphis' shady Beale Street

Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground

Hard Bounty 01 - SDCC EXCLUSIVE

Zen Intergalactic Ninja ZHB SDCC

Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr is inadvertently frozen in 1890 and, after being transported to twenty-first century Memphis, is accidently thawed by fifteen-year-old Bernie Karp, who begins to follow the rabbi's teachings with unforeseen consequences.

Steve Stern

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