When his father dies, it falls to Larry—the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews—to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. But to the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses, imperiling the fate of his father’s soul. To appease her, he hires a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to say the prayer instead—a decision that will have profound, and very personal, repercussions. Irreverent, hilarious, and wholly irresistible...

Buenos Aires, 1970s. Kaddish Poznan chips the names off gravestones for a living, removing traces of disreputable ancestors for their more respectable kin. His wife Lillian works in insurance, earning money when people live longer than they fear. When the government is overthrown in a military coup, their son Pato is arrested by the police and becomes one of the disappeared. Desperate to find him, Kaddish and Lillian turn to the Ministry of Special Cases, a bureaucracy of anguish and false...

From its unforgettable opening scene in the darkness of a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires, the debut novel from the Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges casts a powerful spell.In the heart of Argentina's Dirty War, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who won't accept him; strives for a wife who forever saves him; and spends his nights protecting the good name of a community that denies his existence. When the nightmare of the disa...

**From the Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, eight powerful stories, dazzling in their display of language and imagination.“Showcases Mr. Englander’s extraordinary gifts as a writer.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times**From the title story, a provocative portrait of two marriages inspired by Raymond Carver’s masterpiece, to “Peep Show” and “How We Avenged the Blums,” two stories that return to the author’s cl...

A viciously funny and intelligently provocative play about family, friendship and faith, adapted by the author from his Pulitzer-finalist short story.THE STAGE DEBUT AWARDS 2025: BEST WRITER, NominatedWho in your life would you trust to keep you alive? And who do you know who would risk their own life for yours?Debbie and Lauren were best friends until Lauren became ultra-Orthodox, changed her name and moved to Jer...

Energized, irreverent, and deliciously inventive stories from Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.In the collection's hilarious title story, a Hasidic man gets a special dispensation from his rabbi to see a prostitute. "The Wig" takes an aging wigmaker and makes her, for a single moment, beautiful. In "The Tumblers," Englander envisions a group of Polish Jews herded toward a train bound for the death camps and, in a de...

Ruchama, a wigmaker from an ultra-orthodox Brooklyn enclave, journeys into Manhattan for inspiration, frequenting a newsstand where she flips through forbidden fashion magazines. An elderly Jew with a long, white beard reluctantly works as a department store Santa Claus every year - until he can take it no longer. And a Hasidic man, frustrated by his wife's lack of interest, gets a dispensation from a rabbi to see a prostitute for the relief of unbearable urges.

Winner of the 2018 Sapir Prize.You need to bribe someone into giving you weed? Don't worry, just step into this court room and call the defendant a murderer. You're a rich, lonely man and you want the joy of company? Don't worry, just buy up people's birthdays, and you'll have friends calling every day. You need to get girls into bed? Don't worry, your writer friend will write you a very persuasive story. You're standing on the edge of a very high building, with al...

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” SelectionAllen Fein— née Ari Feinberg—is on his way to Port Authority when he hears it: “Girls,” the hawker says. “Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree all-around stage.” This is the Times Square Allen remembers. But he’s a married man now. Well, maybe one little peek . . .From one of the most dazzling voices in contemporary literature, “Peep Show” is a funny, surprising, surreal story of sexual longing and the deeper shadows of desire. In the...

'One of our most consistently brilliant, bold and funny writers' Dave Eggers'His writing is liberal in every good sense of the word' Jonathan FranzenA spellbinding thriller. A spy novel. A love story . . .Prisoner Z, held at a black site in the Negev desert for a dozen years, has only his guard for company. How does a nice American Jewish boy from Long Island wind up an Israeli spy working for Mossad, and later, a traitor to his adopted country? What...

A political thriller set against the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year“Blends elements of spy thriller and love story, magical realism, and an all-too-real history of one of the world’s most intractable problems: peace between Israel and its neighbors." —The Boston GlobeIn t...

A FRANK O'CONNOR AWARD-winning, simply stunning short-story collection by one of America's most critically acclaimed young writers.From the up-and-coming young American writer who has contributed to McSweeney's and written for THE NEW YORKER comes a masterful collection of short stories that has already received rave reviews from many of the most prominent writers working today. Some of the stories are comic masterpieces, some embody as dark a vision of the univers...