
Witz
A Novel
Joshua Cohen(Author)
Dalkey Archive Press
Published on 24. June 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
817 pages
978-1-56478-588-6 (ISBN)
Description
On Christmas Eve 1999, all the Jews in the world die in a strange, millennial plague, with the exception of the firstborn males, who are soon adopted by a cabal of powerful people in the American government. By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish Jew left is increasingly stigmatized for not being religious. Since his very existence exposes the illegitimacy of the newly converted, Israelien becomes the object of a worldwide hunt...
Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, "real" world, another last Jew-the last living Holocaust survivor-sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.
Meanwhile, in the not-too-distant future of our own, "real" world, another last Jew-the last living Holocaust survivor-sits alone in a snowbound Manhattan, providing a final melancholy witness to his experiences in the form of the punch lines to half-remembered jokes.
Reviews / Votes
"The sort of postmodern epic that arrives like a comet about once every decade, like Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow. Like any epic, it defies summary and overflows with puns, allusions, digressions, authorial sleights of hand and structural gags-in the tradition of Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne." * New York Observer * "Witz is a brave and artful attempt to explore and explode the limits of the sentence." * New York Times *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Normal, IL
United States
Product notice
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 227 mm
Width: 151 mm
Thickness: 52 mm
Weight
1037 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-56478-588-6 (9781564785886)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Joshua Cohen, born in 1980 in Somers Point, N.J., is one of the most ambitious young novelists in English. Witz is his fourth novel; he's also written four collections of stories, a book-length essay called Attention! (2013), and extensive criticism for Harper's, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, The Believer, The London Review of Books, and The Jewish Daily Forward. He received a 2012 Pushcart Prize and the 2013 Matanel Prize in Jewish Literature.