As we prepare for the kick-off event for our 10th anniversary book, the One Book, One Jewish community committee is catching up with our past authors. We’ve asked them to fill us in on what they’ve published since being featured as a One Book selection and to share a special recipe with us in honor of this year’s choice, Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking.
Author Name: Aaron Lansky
OBOJC Book Title: Outwitting History
Have you published another book since your OBOJC book? If so, what is the title? Can you briefly describe the book? If you have another book due out soon, please tell us about that one and the estimated publication date.
I’ve just returned from four months of seclusion in an Acadian fishing village in Nova Scotia, where I completed about two-thirds of my next book. In some ways it’s a sequel to Outwitting History: a first-person adventure story about Yiddish books and culture. But in other ways it tells a very different story, since Outwitting History chronicled the colorful and contentious older Jews who gave us their books, and this one looks at the remarkable young people who are excavating them, sounding their depths, and transforming them into new creativity.
Completion date? As they say in Yiddish, “Gey zay a novi – go be a prophet.” When people asked me how long it took me to write my first book, I confidently replied, “Eight months,” which was the length of my book-writing sabbatical in 2003-2004. This summer I reread Outwitting History for the first time, and I was astonished to read that “I began preliminary work on this book thirteen years ago…” So far, at least, I’m ahead of schedule with the new one. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s finished.
Author Name: Ariel Sabar
OBOJC Book Title: My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq
Have you published another book since your OBOJC book? If so, what is the title? Can you briefly describe the book? If you have another book due out soon, please tell us about that one and the estimated publication date.
In 2011, I published Heart of the City: Nine Stories of Love and Serendipity on the Streets of New York. After the heavy lifting of My Father’s Paradise, I wanted to write something light. The