Chopping Onions on my Heart, Samantha Ellis (Chatto and Windus)
A life-affirming memoir about resilience and repair, and the healing power of dancing to our ancestors’ music, cooking up their recipes and sharing their stories. Read Ellis’ article for the JC, “My mission to save the threatened Jewish Arabic language of my childhood”, here.

Chutzpah! A Memoir of Faith, Sexuality and Daring to Stay, Yehudis Fletcher (Transworld)
A fearless exploration of what is possible when one person simply refuses to choose between abandoning their roots and abandoning themselves. Read the JC review here. 

City of Laughter, Temim Fruchter (Dialogue Books)
A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European, Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets, and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years.

Berlin Atomized, Julia Kornberg (Astra House)
A kinetic, globetrotting novel following three siblings – Jewish and downwardly mobile – from 2001 to 2034, as they come of age against the major crises of the 21st century.

Fear No Pharaoh, Richard Kreitner (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
A dramatic history of how American Jews reckoned with slavery and fought in the Civil War.

Nothing Vast, Moshe Zvi Marvit (Acre Books)
A sweeping multigenerational tale, spanning 1932 to 1973, following two families – one Moroccan, one Polish – filled with Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, and reactionaries. 

Ripeness, Sarah Moss (Picador)
An extraordinary novel about familial love and the communities we create, about migration and new beginnings, and about what it is to have somewhere to belong.

Letters, Oliver Sacks, edited by Kate Edgar (Picador)
The letters of one of the greatest observers of the human species, revealing his passion for life and work, friendship and art, medicine and society, and the richness of his relationships with friends, family, and fellow intellectuals over the decades, are collected here for the first time. Read the JC obituary of Oliver Sacks, here.

Vera, or Faith, Gary Shteyngart (Atlantic)
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love each other deeply, but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds.

Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and wondrous eyes of a child. Read the JC’s 2011 interview with Gary Shteyngart on why he misses being a failure here.

Family Romance, Jean Strouse (Farrar, Strous & Giroux)
The dramas, mysteries, intrigues, and tragedies of the eminent Wertheimer family, structured around the twelve portraits John Singer Sargent painted of them between 1898 and 1908.

The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon (Little Brown)
Weaving together the personal and historical, this is a story of betrayal, survival and hope in Israel’s borderlands, written by acclaimed Haaretz journalist. Read the JC review, here.

The 2025 Wingate Prize winner was Lublin by Manya Wilkinson.

Set in Poland in the years before the Holocaust, Manya Wilkinson’s novel is part fairy tale, part horror. Speaking to The JC after the prize was announced, Wilkinson said: “One of my aims was to write in a very contemporary way, to write an edgy novel. That’s a way in which I see myself as bringing this rich shtetl world to contemporary readers and keeping it alive.”