The shortlist for Britain’s pre-eminent Jewish literary prize comes up short

The JQ Wingate Literary Prize is Britain’s pre-eminent Jewish literary prize. Jewish writers have not always received their due from other literary prizes and over the past 40 years, the JQ Wingate Prize has been dedicated to promoting the best Jewish writing in fiction and non-fiction.

So why am I unhappy with the 2019 shortlist? First, where are the British writers? Not one has been shortlisted. Four of the authors on the shortlist are American, one French and one born in Poland, who lived most of her life in France.

I would be the first to praise the recent explosion of good Jewish-American writing — and the shortlisted novels by Chloe Benjamin (The Immortalists) and Dara Horn (Eternal Life) have received considerable acclaim in the US. However, no place for Clive Sinclair’s final book of short stories, Shylock Must Die or Tom Rachman’s The Italian Teacher?

There are other omissions. The late Aharon Appelfeld missed the cut with his last masterpiece, The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping. And most seriously, the shortlist includes five novels and one memoir. No history books or biographies in a good year for both. No room for Benjamin Balint’s superb book, Kafka’s Last Trial, about the battle over Kafka’s literary estate, Steven Zipperstein’s Pogrom about the atrocity in Kishinev or the second volume of Zachary Leader’s fine biography of Saul Bellow, three of my favourite books of the past year. Nor for The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es.