28 years ago political philosopher Francis Fukuyama famously declared “the end of history,”meaning that there would be “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” It was a heady time. The Berlin Wall was poised to fall…
Although Americans may not immediately recognize his name, best-selling novelist Meir Shalev is one of Israel’s most beloved and celebrated authors. He is a man with deeply held convictions and opinions about both the art of writing and Israel.
Kati Marton’s early life reads like the plot of a John le Carré spy novel. Marton was born in Budapest in the early years of the Cold War to journalists who, at the time, were among the most famous anti-communist dissidents in the world.
In each of Alan Furst’s 14 novels about spies—not spy novels, he insists there is a difference—characters inevitably end up dining at Brasserie Heininger in Paris. The fictional restaurant, based on the real Brasserie Bofinger, with its opulent marble staircase and shucked oysters, represents the glamour and the joie de vivre of 1930s Paris, a city he calls “the heart of civilization.”
In 1987, the editors of the Israeli weekly newsmagazine Koteret Rashit marked the 20th year of Israeli control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by dispatching the young, up-and-coming novelist and journalist David Grossman to spend seven weeks among Palestinians and Israeli settlers living in the West Bank.
David Brooks, that rare New York Times columnist equally criticized by liberals and conservatives alike, was born in Toronto, Canada. His father’s college teaching jobs brought the family to New York City and Philadelphia before Brooks headed off to college at the University of Chicago, where he caught the attention of William F. Buckley. After graduation…
France’s public intellectual no.1 has become its number-one defender of Jews—and democratic intervention around the world.
Australian-born, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and former journalist Geraldine Brooks has made her mark with daring fictional reimaginings of some of the most iconic figures in history and literature. A convert to Judaism, Brooks delved into Jewish history in her 2008 novel, People of the Book, which recounts the journey of the Sarajevo Haggadah through centuries of war and strife.
The Washington, DC resident and former USAID subcontractor was arrested in 2009 for bringing computer and networking equipment to Cuba’s Jewish community. Two years later, he was convicted of being “a threat to the security and integrity of the state,” and sentenced to 15 years. As a prisoner, Gross lived his life in the confines of a small cell, fighting anger, boredom and declining health…
We live in the era of Jewish historical fiction. Hundreds of novels set at some point in the long Jewish past have been published in recent years, some based on biblical stories or Jewish folk tales, others built around major historical figures. The phenomenon shows no sign of slowing, with readers continuing to greedily devour historical fiction, and writers delighted to feed their addiction.
A Moment Symposium with Robert Barnes / Lyle Denniston / Tony Mauro / Sarah Posner / Leslie C. Griffin / Stephen Wermiel / Marshall Breger / Emily Bazelon / Dahlia Lithwick
One of the lesser-known heroes of World War II was Jan Karski (1914-2000), an officer in the Polish Underground resistance who infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto twice… This past April, actor David Strathairn took on the role of Karski in a dramatic reading of Derek Goldman’s play, Remember This: Walking with Jan Karski, at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
