It’s the Jazz age in New York, as portrayed in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the age of the super wealthy, who are bored and languishing in their waterfront mansions. It’s also the age of rum running, smuggling, bootlegging, gangsters, and robbery. Sixteen-year-old Henrietta “Henny” Fine survives in this world as a street urchin,… Continue reading The Adventures of Henrietta Fine
Tag: Historical Fiction
Benjamin of Tudela and His Shabbos Goy
“You will be traveling through the Languedoc, where Dualism flourishes. Our flesh and bone, they say, come from Satan, and our angelic spirit from Jesus.” It is a warning to a Jewish rabbi entering the land of the Cathars, the heretic Catholic sect challenging the authority of the Pope. Thus begins the journey of Benjamin… Continue reading Benjamin of Tudela and His Shabbos Goy
The Saint-Makers
More by Paul M. Levitt See all works by Paul M. Levitt
Berlin Revisited
An absorbing new insight into a little-known aspect of the second world war. Paul Levitt takes us deep into pre and post-war Berlin in a fast-moving, brilliantly observed, enthralling and engaging story of a Jewish son forced to confront his mother’s way of surviving as Nazi power increased. We are caught up in his growing… Continue reading Berlin Revisited
Rowing to Ithaca
This is a novel about love, and in the dying words of the main characters, “what might have been.” But what might have been becomes a labyrinth where loving and being loved by more than one person forces choices and loss. Although the story is told by different characters, all are present as very believable… Continue reading Rowing to Ithaca
A Love Beyond Grievance
Beginning with an unwanted pregnancy and the red scare of the 1950s, Paul Levitt’s tale of the ups-and-downs—political, professional, sexual, connubial—of an academic life is full of lively incident, telling observation, practical advice, and charm. Plus, there is the protagonist’s indomitable Jewish mother to put everything in perspective! The news of a new novel by… Continue reading A Love Beyond Grievance
Yana
It is Yana Primuz herself, known to be “so good with words,” who tells us of her forced removal as a teenager during WWII from Belgrade in Yugoslavia to a labor camp, Zella-Mehlis (historical, not a fiction), just south of Belsen in Germany. For years, she suffers from rape, from cold and hunger, is forced… Continue reading Yana