An intimate account of the author's youth in a strict Orthodox community describes his dysfunctional family's vengeful personification of God, his exile to reform school after a childhood misdemeanor, and his efforts to make sense of his religious beliefs while connecting with the outside world. Simultaneous.

Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir

Religion & Spirituality

Auslander, Shalom

Judaism

Penguin Audio

Beware Of God

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

Picador

Page edges tanned. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

Foreskin's Lament

Feh: A Memoir

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Riverhead Books

Violent rabbis, lovelorn wives, a busy Grim Reaper, shame-filled simians, and one seriously angry deity populate this humorous and disquieting collection. 
 Shalom Auslander's stories in Beware of God have the mysterious punch of a dream. They are wide ranging and inventive: A young Jewish man's inexplicable transformation into a very large, blond, tattooed goy ends with a Talmudic argument over whether or not his father can beat his unclean son with a copy of the Talmud. A pious man having a near-death experience discovers that God is actually a chicken, and he's forced to reconsider his life -- and his diet. At God's insistence, Leo Schwartzman searches Home Depot for supplies for an ark. And a young boy mistakes Holocaust Remembrance Day as emergency preparedness training for the future. 
 Auslander draws upon his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York State to craft stories that are filled with shame, sex, God, and death, but also manage to be wickedly funny and poignant.

Beware of God: Stories

United States

Simon&Schuster

Shalom Auslander's stories in Beware of God have the mysterious punch of a dream. They are wide ranging and inventive: A young Jewish man's inexplicable transformation into a very large, blond, tattooed goy ends with an argument over whether or not his father can beat his unclean son with a copy of the Talmud. A pious man having a near-death experience discovers that God is actually a chicken, and he's forced to reconsider his life -- and his diet. At God's insistence, Leo Schwartzman searches Home Depot for supplies for an ark. And a young boy mistakes Holocaust Remembrance Day as emergency preparedness training for the future. Auslander draws upon his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York State to craft stories that are filled with shame, sex, God, and death, but also manage to be wickedly funny and poignant.

I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat: Fifty Years of Sylvester and Tweety

Traces the history of the Tweety and Sylvester cartoons, and includes plot summaries

Comics & Graphic Novels

BECK, JERRY

Comic Strips

Henry Holt Co.

Solomon Kugel wishes for nothing more than to be nowhere, to be in a place with no past, no history, no wars, no genocides. The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: No one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any import has ever happened there, which is exactly why Kugel decided to move his family there. To begin again. To start anew. But it isn't quite working out that way. His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won't stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one he bought, and he fears his is next. And when, one night, Kugel discovers history - a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history - hiding in his attic, bad very quickly becomes worse. Like nothing you've read before, the critically acclaimed Shalom Auslander's debut novel is a hilarious and disquieting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. `Scabrous and determinedly iconoclastic . . . one of the funniest and most thought-provoking novels you'll read all year' Sunday Times `A wonderful, twisted, trangressive, heartbreaking, true, and hugely funny book. It will make very many people angry. It will also make very many people very happy.' A. L. Kennedy, author of Day `Auslander writes like some contemporary comedic Jeremiah, thundering warnings of disaster and retribution. What makes him so terrifyingly funny is that he isn't joking.' Howard Jacobson, author of The Finkler Question, winner of the Man Booker Prize `Can the darkest events of the twentieth century and of all human history be used to show the folly of hope? And can the result be so funny that you burst out laughing again and again? If you doubt this is possible, read Hope: A Tragedy. You won't regret it.' John Gray, author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Hope: A Tragedy

Picador (16 Feb 2012)

‘Extremely funny, weirdly touching and acute about families’ – Guardian 
‘Daring, provocative and controversial . . . a work of genius’ – Scotsman 
‘Terrifically funny . . . Close-to-the-knuckle farce with a big beating heart’ – Daily Mail\nSeventh Seltzer has done everything he can to break from the traditions of the past, but in his overbearing, narcissistic mother’s last moments, she whispers in his ear the two words he always knew she would: ‘Eat me’.\nThis is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions. Of practical concern, she’s six-foot-two and weighs over thirty stone – even divided up between Seventh and his eleven brothers, that's a lot of red meat. Plus, Second keeps kosher, Ninth is vegan and Sixth is dead. To make matters worse, even if he can wrangle his brothers together for a feast, the Can-Am people have assimilated, and the only living Cannibal who knows how to perform the ancient ritual is their Uncle Ishmael, a far from reliable guide.\nBeyond the practical, Seventh struggles with the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels – to his mother, to his people and to his unique cultural heritage. His mother always taught him he was a link in a chain, stretching back centuries. But he’s getting tired of chains.\nShalom Auslander's Mother for Dinner is an outrageously tasty comedy about identity and inheritance, the things we owe our families and the things we owe ourselves.\nThe new book by the author of Hope: A Tragedy – ‘the funniest novel of the decade’ Sunday Times

Mother for Dinner

SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021\n‘Outrageous satire . . . extremely funny, weirdly touching’ – Guardian 
‘A work of genius’ – Scotsman 
‘Close-to-the-knuckle farce with a big beating heart’ – Daily Mail\nThis is the story of an unusual family. Though they are nothing like yours, you will recognize them. They are the last Cannibal-Americans. And they have a problem.\nWhen their mother dies, twelve children gather to dispose of the body in the traditional manner . . . by eating it. But can they follow the ancient rituals of consumption? Is their unique cultural heritage worth preserving if it's this gross? And what about dietary requirements - one of them is vegan. Surely it can't be this hard to do the right thing?\nMother for Dinner is a dark comedy about modern life and its many difficulties.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Auslander, Shalom. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Auslander, Shalom

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Auslander, Shalom. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir

Beware Of God

Foreskin's Lament

Feh: A Memoir

Beware of God: Stories

Beware of God: Stories

I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat: Fifty Years of Sylvester and Tweety

Hope: A Tragedy

Mother for Dinner

Mother for Dinner