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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander 207 pages



The short stories in this collection deal with Jewish religion, tradition and culture.  The Holocaust features in many of the stories as well.  In fact, in the title story a couple has invented a game in which they analyze acquaintances and friends.  The purpose of the analysis is to determine if the friend would harbor them, or hand them over to authorities, in the event of another Holocaust.

A few stories have some humor, one of my favorites was Camp Sundown.  However, even the humorous stories tend to have dark slants.  How We Avenged the Blums tells the story of a group of young Jewish boys who are determined to stop an anti-Semite bully.  The young men train under the direction of Boris, who asks “Do you know which countries have no anti-Semite?” The answer: “The country with no Jew”.


I enjoyed these stories and I would highly recommend this book.

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