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Sex, lies and terrorists

Ellie Levenson’s thriller is a twisty page-turner with an intriguing concept that grabs from the get-go

By Jennifer Lipman

1 min read

World expert: David Harris and his new book

Books

There’s no easy cure for the world’s longest hatred. But this book is a start

By Nicole Lampert

2 min read

Rabbi Naftali Schiff, left, and Michael Calvin, co-authors of the book 'Miracle'. (Jacob Gersch photography)

Holocaust film

One rabbi’s search for the boys who survived an Auschwitz gas chamber

By Eliana Jordan

3 min read

Books

The horror behind Hayim Bialik’s most feted poem

By David Herman

1 min read

Books

If you wanted something done in Jewish Europe 300 years ago, who did you ask?

By Jennifer Lipman

3 min read

Jewish children's books

What’s the difference between an emigrant and an immigrant?

By Angela Kiverstein

1 min read

Books

‘Do we really want to know about human goodness?’

By Etan Smallman

5 min read

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Children's books

What it means to grow up as a Jewish child from Cuba

A recipe developer talks to Eliana Jordan about her debut novel for children

By Eliana Jordan

2 min read

Patterns of behaviour: author Jennifer Stempel

Books

William Shakespeare was a ‘Jewish woman of north African descent’, new book claims

Emilia Bassano, England’s first published female poet, has long been associated with the Bard

By Siam Goorwich

2 min read

Historian Irene Coslet argues that Emilia Bassano was responsible for the plays attributed to Shakespeare (Image courtesy of Pen and Sword Books Ltd)

Books

A timely reminder for all those anti-Israel hysterics: this is what genocide looks like

Robert Low welcomes a robust history of the Holocaust in an era in which the facts are under threat

By Robert Low

3 min read

Jews queuing at the Glass House in Budapest hoping to get documentation that would allow them to leave Hungary

Books

The Jewish woman who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe

Jennifer Lipman meets the author of a new book about Zionist paratrooper and poet Hannah Senesh

By Jennifer Lipman

6 min read

Jewish Joan of Arc: Hannah Senesh and Douglas Century with his book Crash of Heavens

Books

Berlin Shuffle review: Pimps, prostitutes and peddlers in Weimar Germany

Hopeless cases, lowlifes and down-and-outs, the atmosphere in the extraordinarily talented Ulrich Boschwitz’s first novel feels like something from Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera

By David Herman

2 min read

Berlin Shuffle review: Pimps, prostitutes and peddlers in Weimar Germany

Books

Auslander review: a tale that supports the theory we don’t belong anywhere

The former journalist Michael Moritz’s family memoir of escape and exile is a triumph

By Jenni Frazer

2 min read

The long lines of blood and family: Moritz's book and his family tree

Books

Sensory vignettes from Walter Benjamin’s Berlin childhood

This short book is an excellent introduction to the eminent philosopher’s formative years through the eyes of his child self

By Mark Glanville

2 min read

Sensory vignettes from Walter Benjamin’s Berlin childhood

Books

2025 in review: Books

Our critics’ stand-out Jewish books of the year include eviscerating fiction, assiduously researched history, memoirs and reflections on the lives of poets

By Robert Low and Jennifer Lipman and Jenni Frazer and David Herman and Mark Glanville and Amanda Hopkinson and Monica Porter and Rabbi Howard Cooper

7 min read

Books

Goodbye to Berlin – a lost Jewish Germany is brought back to life in an epic saga

David Bennun has high praise for The Effingers, a beautifully subtle novel describing Germany’s slide into Nazism

By David Bennun

5 min read

Goodbye to Berlin – a lost Jewish Germany is brought back to life in an epic saga

Books

John Irving’s latest: ‘an unapologetically Zionist heroine’

The author is to be applauded for exploring fundamental questions of Jewish identity in this era of misguided political correctness, but his manuscript needs a brutal edit

By Ben Felsenburg

3 min read

Good intentions: John Irving and his new book

Books

‘He was one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived’

Called a ‘Polish Franz Kafka’ by Bashevis Singer, Bruno Schulz wrote two books of short stories before he shot dead by an SS officer in 1942. Now the Pushkin Press has released a new anthology of his work

By David Herman

2 min read