Jonathan Rabb’s Followers (120)

Jonathan Rabb

Born

in The United States

January 01, 1964

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Mystery & Thrillers

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Jonathan Rabb grew up knowing he would be an academic. The son and grandson (on both sides) of historians, Rabb’s world shook at its very core when he opted to try his hand at political theory. As an undergraduate at Yale, Rabb divided his time among Locke and Hobbes and Hegel while spending his more reckless hours singing with the Whiffenpoofs and galloping across stage in such roles as Harry the Horse and a perfectly bean-poled Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha. He even went so far as to make his living his first years out of college as an actor in New York before settling on a PhD program at Columbia.

Somehow, though, that was not to be. While in Germany researching the very compelling and very obscure seventeenth-century theorist Samuel vo Jonathan Rabb grew up knowing he would be an academic. The son and grandson (on both sides) of historians, Rabb’s world shook at its very core when he opted to try his hand at political theory. As an undergraduate at Yale, Rabb divided his time among Locke and Hobbes and Hegel while spending his more reckless hours singing with the Whiffenpoofs and galloping across stage in such roles as Harry the Horse and a perfectly bean-poled Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha. He even went so far as to make his living his first years out of college as an actor in New York before settling on a PhD program at Columbia.

Somehow, though, that was not to be. While in Germany researching the very compelling and very obscure seventeenth-century theorist Samuel von Pufendorf (Whiffenpoof on Pufendorf), Rabb got the idea for a thriller in which a young professor at Columbia gets caught up in a vast conspiracy predicated on deciphering a centuries-old manuscript, a response to Machiavelli’s The Prince. Suddenly theater and history had come together in the form of historical fiction and, leaving his Fulbright and academia behind, Rabb spent the next two years teaching test prep and writing furiously.

In 1998, his first novel, The Overseer, reached bookshelves, followed three years later by The Book of Q—another historical thriller—and his marriage to Andra Reeve, the director of prime time casting at CBS television. Having discovered a new kind of bliss in his private life, Rabb decided it was time to dive into the decay and despair of Berlin between the wars. He set to work on what would be the first in his Berlin Trilogy, Rosa, and also began to teach fiction at the 92nd Street Y. In July 2004 his wife had twins, and for the next two years, while writing and researching Shadow and Light, Rabb became their primary caretaker. Somehow, they continued to grow and flourish, and Shadow and Light found its way to the page.

Rabb is now deep into the final book of the trilogy, and still finds time to perform Gilbert and Sullivan with the Blue Hill Troupe of New York, the Harrisburg Symphony, and anyone else willing to indulge his love of Patter roles. This fall, Rabb started teaching in the NYU Creative Writing Program and continues to write reviews for Opera News and essays for the series I Wish I’d Been There. ...more

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Jonathan Rabb’s books

Average rating: 3.61 · 4,418 ratings · 519 reviews · 15 distinct works • Similar authors

	Rosa (Berlin Trilogy, #1) 3.74 avg rating — 1,260 ratings — published 2005 — 43 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Among the Living 3.78 avg rating — 949 ratings — published 2016 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Shadow and Light (Berlin Trilogy, #2) 3.50 avg rating — 682 ratings — published 2009 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Overseer 3.30 avg rating — 500 ratings — published 1998 — 33 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Second Son (Berlin Trilogy, #3) 3.70 avg rating — 379 ratings — published 2011 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Book of Q 3.45 avg rating — 395 ratings — published 2001 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Shadow and Light it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Overseer: A Novel 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Overseer 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Overseer, the Sales Promotion 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Jonathan Rabb…

Series by Jonathan Rabb

Berlin Trilogy (3 books)
by

Jonathan Rabb

3.66 avg rating — 2,321 ratings

Quotes by Jonathan Rabb (?)

“This morning he had imagined he would know everything she had lived through. How foolish of him. He had forgotten the one truth of the Lager: that nothing is ever shared. Hunger and cold, yes, but the rest...these horrors lived inside the mind in pure isolation.”
― Jonathan Rabb, Among the Living

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“Yes, I know you know. And I know you know better than most. I understand, but this ain’t like what you had in the war in those camps. I’m sorry to say it, but it ain’t the same. They tried to kill you, all a you, all at once. I seen that. But here they kill us one at a time and that’s a difference.”
― Jonathan Rabb, Among the Living

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“He tried to empty his mind as he stood at the top of the stairs. It was always best to come at these things without something to say: so much anticipated of him, as if he were only waiting for the opportunity to unburden himself. To see them all thinking, "I understand what it is you've lived through" - if only there wasn't such a desperate longing in each of them to run. What a bind to put themselves in, the moral weight of it all, to be brave and consoling even as they felt nothing but pity and revulsion. Was it wrong to be revolted by a man like this? Did his story forgive them that? Wouldn't he forgive them that? Didn't they deserve to be forgiven?”
― Jonathan Rabb, Among the Living

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Polls

What work of fiction would you like to read in June?

Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham

5 votes, 33.3%

Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

5 votes, 33.3%

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

2 votes, 13.3%

My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

2 votes, 13.3%

Rosa by Jonathan Rabb

1 vote, 6.7%

The Iron Heel by Jack London

0 votes, 0.0%

Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham

0 votes, 0.0%

15 total votes

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Jonathan Rabb’s Followers (120)

Jonathan Rabb

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