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Books

Books

Latest from Books

From the Front Line review: Vasily Grossman gives us an unrivalled picture of the war

David Bennun is mesmerised by the Soviet Jewish journalist’s articles, and what they reveal about him

By David Bennun

5 min read

Obdurate insistence: the writer Vasily Grossman, and Jews arriving at Treblinka in August 1942

Diversity: (left to right) Toby Lloyd, Howard Jacobson and Francesca Simon (Photos: Helen Giles,Suzie Howell)

What do the preoccupations of our novelists say about Anglo-Jewry and wider society?

What stories are the People of the Book writing and reading about themselves?

6 min read

(Left to right) Adam LeBor, Hilary Freeman, Max Olesker and Hadley Freeman, together with Steph Thwaites and Larry Finlay, co-chairs of the Jewish Publishing Circle

JPC party gives ‘strength’ to Jewish publishers and authors facing racism post October 7

Guests at the event heard a panel chaired by Hadley Freeman with writers Adam LeBor, Max Olesker and Hilary Freeman

2 min read

Keith Kahn-Harris. (Photo: Zoe Norfolk)

‘Judaism and heavy metal teach us how to live – and what it means to die well’

Lecturer Keith Kahn-Harris’s new book ‘The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osbourne’ celebrates the life and death of the Prince of Darkness, whose music shares profound similarities with Judaism, he argues

By Daniel Ben-David

3 min read

Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare review: ‘On loving Shakespeare and hating cancer’

Greg Doran shares writings by his late husband Antony Sher, who died of cancer in 2021, alongside his own musings on grief and his mission to track down Shakespeare’s First Folios

By David Herman

2 min read

Judy Blume’s story, told lovingly and in exhaustive detail – but without her input

This is a lovingly delivered portrait but it feels too often like a sanitised version of the writer’s life

By Jennifer Lipman

2 min read

‘I had a treasure in my hands’: Nikki Goldstein on the book she co-wrote with Bondi victim Rabbi Eli Schlanger

‘He prepared me to be his foot soldier,’ Goldstein said as Conversations with My Rabbi was published after the rabbi’s murder

By Jane Prinsley

4 min read

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More from Books

The centenary of Allen Ginsberg

A reflection on the life of the Jewish poet who formed the core of America’s Beat Generation

By David Herman

2 min read

American beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997) at the Albert Memorial in London. (Photo by M Stroud/Getty Images)

Secrets and lies: Victoria Redel’s new novel imagines the world of a woman artist in 17th century Amsterdam

The Jews who fled from Portugal to the Netherlands play a key part in the story

5 min read

Secrets and lies: Victoria Redel’s new novel imagines the world of a woman artist in 17th century Amsterdam

Stay Alive by Ian Buruma review: ‘a meticulously researched war history’

In his understated matter-of-fact style, Buruma tells the extraordinary stories of the Berliner Jews who evaded arrest by the Gestapo

3 min read

Reich in ruins: Berlin in June 1945

Something Might Fall review: Portrait of a woman on the edge and a marriage on fire

David Flusfeder’s modernist novella is full of unresolved sentences and unlikeable characters

By Jenni Frazer

2 min read

Something Might Fall review: Portrait of a woman on the edge and a marriage on fire

The songs of anguish they wrote and sang in the Polish ghettos and camps

This book of songs from the Shoah was conceived and written in passion, and the unsparing efforts of the authors to trace their composers is laudable

By Mark Glanville

2 min read

Words for horror: lyricists Shmerke Kaczerginski (far left) and Abraham Sutzkever (second left) with two other survivors in a portrait taken in Moscow after the war

The Inspired review: ‘Reminds us that comfort can always be found in music’

James Inverne’s debut novel conveys the turmoil of a person under huge political pressure and is imbued with a musicality honed from decades of experience as a music journalist

1 min read

The Inspired review: ‘Reminds us that comfort can always be found in music’

Children's books

Children’s books: 7-12 years

From a space-colonising dynasty to an ice-cream ambush, JC Life rounds up the best new titles for kids

By Angela Kiverstein

1 min read

Children’s books: 7-12 years

Noughties, Nazis and tittle-tattle – how my and my survivor grandma’s lives chime

Jess Robinson’s memoir combines memories of her life in her twenties in London with her grandmother’s under Hitler

6 min read

Like (grand)mother, like (grand)daughter: Jess and Rosi

The Melted Pot review: ‘Why has this intolerance been tolerated?’

Harry Saul Markham’s sure-footed exploration of the forces of extremism which threaten Britain, and its Jews in particular, will alarm moderates, but it also offers a way ahead

By Ben Felsenburg

1 min read

Sobering times: the march against antisemitism in November 2023, and (right) Markham's new book

Worlds Apart review: How a terrible childhood can last a lifetime

This is beautifully written and translated autofiction by an author desperate to make sense of her bleak start in life

2 min read

Worlds Apart review: How a terrible childhood can last a lifetime

Famesick review: Lena Dunham bares her soul on a pitiful cycle of fame, abuse, drugs and self-harm

In her new memoir, the creator and writer of the hit TV series Girls writes with fluency and candour about the price of stardom

By Eliana Jordan

2 min read

Voice of a generation: Lena Dunham and (left) her new tell-all memoir

‘It changed my understanding of the trials’ – Natalie Livingstone tells the story behind The Nuremberg Women at JC event

The author told guests at Hampstead Synagogue how a visit to the Imperial War Museum inspired her fascinating new book on history’s most famous trials

By Jamie Shapiro

1 min read

Natalie Livingstone talking to Simon Sebag Montefiore at JC event at Hampstead Synagogue

A medic’s front-line accounts of battlefield salvations

A former British Army officer is moved by a new book on military medicine and the ingenuity and humanity of those who adminster it

1 min read

A medic’s front-line accounts of battlefield salvations

High and Low by Amanda Craig review: ‘A thoroughly moreish state-of-the-nation novel’

If half a century from now you were to be asked what it was like to live in Britain in 2026, this is the book you should hand over in answer

By Ben Felsenburg

2 min read

In this together: Amanda Craig's new novel, and Londoners sitting cheek by jowl share park space with a pigeon

What made Osip Mandelshtam tick?

This book is a fascinating introduction to one of the great modern poets

By David Herman

1 min read

What made Osip Mandelshtam tick?

Himmler’s Curtains: How my survivor mother ended up living in a Nazi leader’s house

This beautifully written memoir is full of startling vignettes, but using a psuedonym in this age of disinformation and denial feels a disservice to the reader

By Jennifer Lipman

2 min read

Pulling back the curtain: Simon Weisz (a pseudonym) and his mother c.1959

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