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Kaddish.com
On sale
25th June 2020
Price: £8.99
Larry is the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews. When his father dies, it’s his responsibility to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months.
To the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses – imperilling the fate of his father’s soul. To appease her, Larry hatches an ingenious if cynical plan, hiring a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to recite the prayer and shepherd his father’s soul safely to rest.
This is Nathan Englander’s freshest and funniest work to date – a satire that touches, lightly and with unforgettable humour, on the conflict between religious and secular worlds, and the hypocrisies that run through both.
To the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses – imperilling the fate of his father’s soul. To appease her, Larry hatches an ingenious if cynical plan, hiring a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to recite the prayer and shepherd his father’s soul safely to rest.
This is Nathan Englander’s freshest and funniest work to date – a satire that touches, lightly and with unforgettable humour, on the conflict between religious and secular worlds, and the hypocrisies that run through both.
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Reviews
Nathan Englander brilliantly tells this modern folk tale, and, honestly, I could not put the book down until I had read it completely
A wry, whip-smart comedy about Jewish identity... A clever novel that finds an innovative way to stage the clash between sincere religious conviction and the sceptic's fear that it's a gigantic con trick, with airtime given to both points of view.
A reminder of Englander's extraordinary skill ... What a rare blessing to find a smart and witty novel about the unexpected ways religious commitment can fracture a life - and restore it.
A rollicking, generous-hearted tale of faith, identity and family... certainly Englander's best novel so far.
An excellent comic dissection of Jewish-American life... This novel reads like Chaim Potok filtered through the sensibility of Mel Brooks. Englander writes cogently about Jewish-American assimilation, and, in his practiced hands, he makes Shuli's journey, both outer and inner, a simultaneously humorous and deeply moving one.
Englander pulls it off with his adroit storytelling skills and comic brio
A lean, keen-witted meditation on faith and filial loyalty
Englander is mischievously hilarious, nightmarish, suspenseful, inquisitive, and deliriously tender in this concentrated tale of tradition and improvisation, faith and love.
Bitingly funny
Englander portrays Shuli's frantic quest--one that jeopardizes Shuli's marriage, his job, even his sanity--with curiosity and deep sympathy, evoking a response that transcends the boundaries of any particular faith.
Echoes of Philip Roth resound in a streamlined, compassionate exploration of faith and purpose.
A satirical take on God, family, and the Internet that has been compared to early Philip Roth
kaddish.com is funny but also profound ... Amid the chaos in which we all live nowadays, "Kaddish.com" is a bright light in a dark world.
Englander is skilled at creating moments of incredible truth, and at writing morality without moralizing
Englander's expansive imagination is such that he can convincingly write the part of a secular Jewish hipster and a born-again Jew - and do it with the Yiddish inflections of a Borscht Belt comedian. A delight of a novel.
Satirical, inventive, and brimming with gallows humor, this novel's whip-smart look at the clash of religious and secular worlds showcases Englander at his best
The funniest Jewish-American writing today... Jewish life is depicted with the illuminating intimacy of an insider.