BIOGRAPHY
FROM MINISKIRT TO HIJAB by JACQUELINE SAPER. A memoir of Jacqueline who was born in Tehran to Iranian and British parents. She recalls her privileged, charmed Jewish childhood in Iran until everything changed in 1979 under the Ayatollah regime. Saper was discriminated against as a Jewish woman and her young daughter experienced radical Islamic indoctrination. They fled in secret when her husband attended a medical conference in Texas.
LIVING THE LUXE LIFE by EFREM HARKHAM & MARK BEGO. A rags to riches memoir of renowned hotelier Efrem who left Israel at 12. Beginning his career in fashion, he moved to Los Angeles establishing a chain of hotels. He shares his experience about life and business and the way he used obstacles as leaning opportunities. He focuses on Talmudic teaching as his business strategy —“everyone is a world everyone a life”. A profound and insightful read.
FINDING CHIKA by MITCH ALBOM. When Mitch Albom and his wife met Chika at the orphanage they operated after the earthquake in Haiti, Chika stole their heart. When she was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour, they took her to America to seek treatment and travelled to other countries attempting to seek a cure. Albom narrates the story by imagining what Chika was thinking and feeling. A sad memoir showing that love has no boundaries.
FAMILY PAPERS by SARAH ABREVAYA STEIN. A fascinating history of the Levy family, Sephardic Jews with roots in Salonika. They were leading publishers and editors and helped chronicle modernity as experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. Stein draws on their correspondence and photos to trace four generations across five continents. Through their letters, she tells their family history together with Sephardic Jews in the twentieth century.
HOLOCAUST
THE ETERNAL NAZI by NICHOLAS KULISH & SOUAD MEKHENNET. The story of Nazi doctor Aribert Heim, a ruthless physician at Mauthausen in 1941. After the war, he escaped to Baden Baden until he heard he was being pursued. However, through vigilant research, German police investigator Alfred Aedtner worked together with legendary Simon Wiesenthal to hunt this man. Heim evaded capture hiding in Cairo for 30 years while the hunt for him continued.
WHY? EXPLAINING THE HOLOCAUST by PETER HAYES. The author tackles fundamental questions: why were the Jews the target of the Nazi regime; why did the persecution of Jews turn, over time, into total annihilation; and why didn’t the Jews receive more help from outside? He explains how a mix of complicity, fear, greed and indifference paved the way. Hayes’s research provides a chilling compendium of the warning signs, past and present.
THE ART OF INVENTING HOPE: INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS WITH ELIE WIESEL by HOWARD REICH. Music critic Reich looks back on conversations with Wiesel ranging on many topics. Both Reich’s father and Wiesel were liberated from Buchenwald on the same day. Reich established a unique friendship with Wiesel when he interviewed him for his newspaper. Wiesel’s legacy and life enabled Reich to understand the fate of his parents whose story is interwoven throughout the book.
SHEDDING OUR STARS by LAUREEN NUSSBAUM. The author owes her life to a courageous German lawyer Hans Calmeyer. When Jews had to register the origin of their grandparents in Nazi occupied Netherlands Calmeyer was able to remove names by declaring them to be Aryan. Nussbaum’s parents were able to shed their yellow stars and be saved from deportation and death. The author interweaves the story of Calmeyer with that of her family in this memoir.
FICTION
THE TEACHER by MICHAL BEN-NAFTALI. The author’s English-language debut is about the life of a lonely teacher Elsa who survived the Holocaust as imagined by one of her former students. The narrator tries to piece together Elsa’s history and the hidden trauma that led to her suicide. Blending history and fiction, she traces her path from Hungary in 1944 when she escapes with her husband on the Kastner train to Palestine. An insightful, tragic novel.
HOUSE OF TRELAWNEY by HANNAH ROTHSCHILD. The author takes us into the satirical world of a family of English aristocrats. Their stately home is in ruin and their finances are dwindling. Kitto lives at Trelawney with Jane and their daughters. When they receive a letter, announcing that a new relation Anastacia is coming to stay Jane needs to bury the hatchet with Kitto’s sister to save the castle. A story of lost and found friendships between three women.
TEN MINUTES 38 SECONDS IN THIS STRANGE WORLD by ELIF SHAFAK. This profound narrative dives into the mind of sex worker ‘Tequila Leila’ who is dying. As her brain shuts down Leila assumes the role of her own biographer tracing the story of the little girl from the provinces who ends up as a crime scene statistic. The first part places us in her brain as we count down to her death while the next is about the five treasured friends who shaped her life.
THE FIFTH COLUMN by ANDREW GROSS. Charles Mossman confronts a Nazi sympathiser with deadly consequences. After his release from prison, he tries to reunite with his wife and daughter. However, when he meets a seemingly amiable Swiss couple who have befriended his daughter Emma, he begins to suspect they may be German spies. After the attack on Pearl Harbour Charles realises that only he may save his daughter from being an innocent pawn.
FURTHER UP THE PATH by DANIEL OZ. Brief fables by Israeli author Daniel Oz, son of the acclaimed writer Amos Oz. They are timeless, open-ended parables, which offer no answers, morals or conclusions and are filled with uncommon imagery. These include a patient who has to use a spoon with holes for medicine, a mayor who cuts celebratory ribbons finding more under each one, a village whose single tree bears a bitter fruit to sustain the townspeople.
HOUSE ON ENDLESS WATERS by EMUNA ELON. Yoel Blum reluctantly agrees to visit Amsterdam to promote his book. He had promised his late mother he would never visit his birthplace. While touring the Jewish Historical Museum he stumbles across footage of his beloved mother with a child he does not recognise. This begins his search into Amsterdam’s wartime history and the networks that hid Jewish children. He finds the reason behind his mother’s silence.
SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
THE SECOND MOUNTAIN by DAVID BROOKS. The world tells us to pursue our self-interest: career wins, high status and acquisition of material things. Brooks uses the metaphor of this being our first mountain climb, which may let us down as we sense there must be a deeper journey awaiting us. He invites the reader to scale a second mountain not rejecting the first but changing your motivation to other-centred. This climb leads to a happier purposeful life.
HERE ALL ALONG by SARAH HURWITZ. An account by former speechwriter to Michelle Obama on how she reengaged with Judaism. At 36, after dealing with a bad breakup and work stress, she began to rediscover Judaism’s allure by diving into the Torah and exploring different traditional practices. This transformed her life. She portrays Judaism as open to questioning and recounts her own spiritual challenges. Part memoir, part meditation.
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