What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


One of the most valuable, insightful collections of stories I have ever read. Englander gets into the contemporary Jewish Diaspora psyche on a grand scale. He also well understands the 'new' -- orthodox -- Israeli one. The weave of the social and political relevance of the stories is sheer genius, just as is the incisive humour and epic sense of emotion that gives the book its intellectual drive. Actually, the stories have the feel of mini novels about them (okay, yes, novellas). Whatever, his exploration of the human condition, particularly the Jewish one, is achieved through contemporary Jewish society and dreams, exploring, among other things, a well known but little explored Jewish condition -- hard-headedness. This particularly comes through in Sister Hills, and is a condition that afflicts the politics of the extreme right just as much (incidentally) as it does the 'principled' extreme left. "... the depth of his feelings is what separates him from just about everyone," as David Eggers puts it on the back cover of this book of stories that, in their portrayal of futility, remind of Babel and Singer.



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