A Replacement Life: A Novel
- ISBN-10
- 0062287893
- ISBN-13
- 9780062287892
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 352
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-06-03
- Publisher
- Harper Collins
- Author
- Boris Fishman
Description
Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Winner of the American Library Association's Sophie Brody Medal Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award A singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a failed journalist asked to do the unthinkable: Forge Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, New York. Yevgeny Gelman, grandfather of Slava Gelman, “didn’t suffer in the exact way” he needs to have suffered to qualify for the restitution the German government has been paying out to Holocaust survivors. But suffer he has—as a Jew in the war; as a second-class citizen in the USSR; as an immigrant to America. So? Isn’t his grandson a “writer”? High-minded Slava wants to put all this immigrant scraping behind him. Only the American Dream is not panning out for him—Century, the legendary magazine where he works as a researcher, wants nothing greater from him. Slava wants to be a correct, blameless American—but he wants to be a lionized writer even more. Slava’s turn as the Forger of South Brooklyn teaches him that not every fact is the truth, and not every lie a falsehood. It takes more than law-abiding to become an American; it takes the same self-reinvention in which his people excel. Intoxicated and unmoored by his inventions, Slava risks exposure. Cornered, he commits an irrevocable act that finally grants him a sense of home in America, but not before collecting a price from his family. A Replacement Life is a dark, moving, and beautifully written novel about family, honor, and justice.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
A Replacement for Religion
By The School Of LifeThis book is about those feelings and what we might do about them. The School of Life is a secular organisation fascinated by the gaps left in modern society by the gradual disappearance of religion.
-
Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo: A Novel
By Boris Fishman. . . Fishman never loses the reader’s trust. No line in this book rings false, no character is unheard, no event seems like a plot device.”—Newsweek
-
Savage Feast: Three Generations, Two Continents, and Dinner Table (A Memoir with Recipes)
By Boris FishmanSavage Feast is Boris’s tribute to food, that secret passage to an intimate conversation about identity, belonging, family, displacement, and love.
-
The Replacement
By Brenna YovanoffPraise for The Replacement: 'I so loved this book' Lauren Kate, bestselling author of Fallen 'Eerie and beautiful' Maggie Stiefvater, bestselling author of Shiver 'This is a dark tale that will totally change any preconceptions you have ...
-
The Replacement Wife: A Novel
By Darby KaneThe #1 International bestselling author of Pretty Little Wife returns with another thrilling domestic suspense novel that asks, how many wives and girlfriends need to disappear before your family notices?
-
Replacement
By Tor UlvenReplacement, his only novel, published two years before Ulven's suicide, is a miniature symphony, wherein the perspectives of unrelated characters are united into what seems a single narrative voice: each personality, directing the book in ...
-
The Replacement Son
By W. S. CulpepperHe knew that if every ship at every port that dealt with cargo handled by individual workers had to have a counter of something, then replacing this man with a mechanized, wage—free alternative would yield an instant, ...
-
Life After Hip Replacement: A Complete Guide to Recovery & Rehabilitation
By Troy A. MilesDr. Troy A. Miles gives patients a clear understanding of what to expect following hip replacement surgery.
-
The Secret of Life: The Little Book That Changed the World
By Dr. Robert S. Love, Dr. Amanda Love, Dr. Shannon MartinThe Secret of Life reveals the lens through which all decisions can be made for the fullest life expression and experience!
-
A Little Life
By Hanya YanagiharaNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search ...