Nathan Englander

presents

kaddish.com:
a novel

This event includes a book signing

Date

Apr
1
Monday
April 1, 2019
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store, the Jewish Arts Collaborative, and Harvard Hillel welcome acclaimed novelist and short story writer NATHAN ENGLANDER—author of Dinner at the Center of the Earth—for a discussion of his latest novel, kaddish.com.

About kaddish.com

Larry is an atheist in a family of orthodox Memphis Jews. When his father dies, it is his responsibility as the surviving son to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. To the horror and dismay of his mother and sisters, Larry refuses—thus imperiling the fate of his father's soul. To appease them, and in penance for failing to mourn his father correctly, he hatches an ingenious if cynical plan, hiring a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to recite the daily prayer and shepherd his father's soul safely to rest.

This is Nathan Englander's freshest and funniest work to date—a satire that touches, lightly and with unforgettable humor, on the conflict between religious and secular worlds, and the hypocrisies that run through both. A novel about atonement; about spiritual redemption; and about the soul-sickening temptations of the internet, which, like God, is everywhere.

Praise

"Englander is mischievously hilarious, nightmarish, suspenseful, inquisitive, and deliriously tender in this concentrated tale of tradition and improvisation, faith and love." —Booklist

"[An] excellent comic dissection of Jewish-American life . . . This novel reads like Chaim Potok filtered through the sensibility of Mel Brooks. Englander writes cogently about Jewish-American assimilation, and, in his practiced hands, he makes Shuli’s journey, both outer and inner, a simultaneously humorous and deeply moving one." —Publishers Weekly

Nathan Englander
Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander is the author of the story collections For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, and the novels The Ministry of Special Cases and Dinner at the Center of the Earth. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Malamud Award, the Frank O'Connor Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. His play The Twenty-Seventh Man premiered at the Public Theater in 2012. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

Photo credit: Joshua Meier

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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Co-Sponsored by Jewish Arts Collaborative

The Jewish Arts Collaborative explores and presents the rich, diverse, and creative world of Jewish arts and culture—past, present, and future—to the widest possible audience, in venues across Greater Boston. Learn more about JArts™ here.

Co-Sponsored by Harvard Hillel

Harvard Hillel is the catalyst for Jewish life, community and personal exploration at Harvard. Their mission is to provide every Jewish Harvard student appropriate grounding for making meaningful Jewish choices in a complex and changing world. Learn more about Harvard Hillel here.

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