A Heaven of Others

by Joshua Cohen

"Joshua Cohen has created a visionary novel that is terrifying and heartbreaking and humbling in its luminous brilliance. In my view, it firmly places the author on the same level as Kafka."--Michael Disend, author of "Stomping the Goyim""The idea that there are multiple heavens, right ones and wrong ones, white ones and black ones, is pushed to its fantastical limits by Brooklyn writer Joshua Cohen in his dream-world novel of the afterlife. . . . "Heaven" is a challenging but rewarding read on thematic and formal levels."--"The Brooklyn Rail""A breathless flight of controlled delirium, an exquisitely blasphemous tour of an afterlife where earth's dominion, in all its terror and glory, trumps the miraculous and overturns the world to come. . . . It's a brave book that should earn its young author the reader's profound and enduring admiration."--Steve Stern, author of "The Frozen Rabbi"When a ten-year-old Jewish boy is exploded on a Jerusalem street by a ten-year-old Palestinian boy, he wakes up in a heaven no one in his tradition prepared him for, a heaven of others. Joshua Cohen's novel stands at the crossroads of a conflicted city and wordplay that both celebrates and dismantles tradition.

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Literary Fiction, American, Novels

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Joshua Aaron Cohen (born September 6, 1980 in New Jersey) is an American novelist and writer of stories.

Reviews

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is Heaven like? What is Muslim Heaven like for a Jew? I think this is what Joshua Cohen is ultimately unraveling in his first novel. This was a very bizarre read, and it has some trippy picture for you folks who like pictures in books. I thought Cohen did a superb job in looking at Heaven through the eyes of 10 year old boy, if you can really look at Heaven. I could be wrong, but I gathered that Heaven is all together for everyone.

"Through time, through dimensions and their lands, a heaven's size, its volume, a heaven's space, its mass and its density, its purchase and purview is that of its inhabitants, its incarnates or more faithfully to all its incarnators if you will say It along with me. Wheresoever they might roam and wander, so roams and wanders Heaven. How and what they think and know (what they think they know), so is the sum thought and knowledge of Heaven. Why they, so why heaven. Who they, Heaven. As, Heaven."

I enjoyed Cohen's look at the concept of time in Heaven. Is there time in Heaven? Is there a future in eternity?

I am curious if Cohen continues to touch on these topics in his other novels. I guess I have to read them as well.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

A brief pause for a change of tone twix Argall and The Wake ;; short and sharp with no intent to skirt Witz -- but one can say, I've read Cohen's first(?)book, type'd=up as a twenty-three-year-old. Want to buy an opinion? It's good, it's short ; pay no money for it if you need not :: monster name dropping would develop D. Barthelme and J. McElroy whose endorsement is like that of Pynchon's or Joyce's.

[Downward · Rating 3 out of 5]

joshua cohens a heaven of others is a short, poetic book the language of which seems to mimic the circumlocutive sentence structure and aesthetics of a religious text, which aesthetically matches the content of the story. it feels like a remarkably innovative novel: a young jewish boy dies at the hand of a muslim suicide bomber, a child his own age. because the young suicide bomber wraps his arms around the protagonist in a deathly and explosive hug, he drags him to the wrong heaven. the idea here being at least partly that heaven is your own creation; you craft the heaven that you think you deserve, with a revelation that all of our heaven's double as a hell. if this sounds complex, its because it is. and yet in spite of the marriage of form and meaning, i can't help but feel like this book is more style than it is substance. the paragraph, pages, chapters, novel: all of it a breathless rush, with sentences turning in on themselves and wrapping around and restarting and stopping and moving on before returnings, etc. etc. etc. i was impressed and i wanted to like it more than i did but there is a lukewarm recommendation at best lurking here.

[Paolo Latini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un Cohen acerbo, imberbe, forse anche prematuro questo di “A Heaven of Others.” Un Cohen che gioca col linguaggio, con i suoi studi di musica, con la lezione di Beckett e Joyce e i primi pruriti DeLilliani. Gioca col linguaggio e già lo ammaestra, lo imbavaglia e poi lo slega, lo disfa e lo rifà: riesce a fargli fare quello che vuole.
In un libro privo di trama Cohen cerca di entrare nella mente di un ragazzino ebreo, Jonathan Schwarzstein, rimasto vittima di un attentato islamico che dopo la morte si trova ad affrontare il paradiso della tradizione musulmano, le 77 vergini e tutto il resto. Con un linguaggio ricco, musicale, evocativo, Cohen prende il non-mondo dopo la morte come una probabile metafora per l’inconoscibilità dell’universo, l’infinito, il transfinito, la precarietà delle leggi fisiche del mondo terreno. C’è anche un’interessante accenno alla teoria delle stringhe, quando nel descrivere il paradiso in cui si trova, quindi l’universo come totalità, dove la materia è fatta di sottili corde, di “strings that were invisible, gusted not only from their very mouths but also as if from their always moist, tuned, tightening and loosening vaginas, from their also always moist, tuned and tuning, tightening and loosening anuses and nostrils and even from the very mutilated wombs of their navels, an A 440 Hz streaming out from their stomachs at the deforming scars of their umbilici, out from between the cleaved halves of their ebonite rubies studded with beryl and carbuncle this A down lower an octave below the middle of All.”
Ma l’idea di Paradiso, e di un Paradiso di un’altra religione, è anche la chiave per osservazioni sulla morte e su come la morte pone fine a tutte le discrepanze che nascono da fucine culturali, temporali e quindi accidentali.
Il DeLillo scorre potente in lui, ma a controllare questa potenza imparare lui deve.

[V · Rating 2 out of 5]

I need to be in a certain patient, accepting frame of mind to read books that are stream of consciousness ramblings. I was not in that state for most of this one but plowed through anyway.

In spite of appearing, at first blush, to be the product of a fevered/drug-induced night of "inspiration" I think this book probably had a quiet brilliance about it. Unfortunately, although I thought the premise was intriguing, the book just didn't do much for me.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much as I liked "Witz," I liked this book much better. I could just see and appreciate Cohen's language play and word play, sliping between thoughts and memory and so on, so much better than in "Witz." Both have some amazing writing, but I could grasp at it better here. That may be a failing on my part and I definitely respect "Witz," but I have to say which one I got into more. This one seems to have a certain charm that I think "Witz" lacked as well. Perhaps "Witz" took on a burden, trying to be Cohen's magnum opus, and couldn't relax and have fun the way this one could. Too much at stake, too serious about itself. Regardless, I think anyone who want to know Cohen should read this one so they can appreciate just how wonderful his writing can be.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read 3/4 of this book straight through. It is disturbing and magical, and the illustrations work well with the text.

This book is about a ten year old Jewish boy from Jerusalem who is killed by a suicide bomber. After dying, he finds himself in Muslim heaven, where he has to navigate being in the wrong place, what to do with the virgins given to him, and so on.

I cannot wait to read Witz!

[Joe Milazzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more of an experiment in language than in thought (assuming there is any real difference between the two), what A HEAVEN OF OTHERS lacks in conceptual rigor it makes up for with associative ingenuity. As an eternal and preternaturally wise child, Cohen's narrator comes off as "believable"... better, compelling. Nevertheless, this feels like a etude or warm-up for something much more grandiose.

[Kelly]

I haven't found a copy of this yet but have read good reviews. I'm looking forward to it.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhausting & demanding, but extremely powerful -- not just in the ways you might expect, but also in its evocation of the small details of daily life & family history.

[Sarah]

I can't wait to read this.

[Alexandre Alphonse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiroume a escribir unha novela.

[Lennon Bruse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best place to start.