Nathan Englander

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Nathan Englander, October 29, 2007. Photo by Christopher Peterson
Nathan Englander, October 29, 2007. Photo by Christopher Peterson

Nathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Knopf in 2000. He received an advance of $350,000 for the collection, an unusually large amount. While his short story collection earned him some scorn from the Jewish community, the collection won rave reviews and Newsweek dubbed him "Fiction's Hot New Talent." [1]

Englander grew up as part of the Orthodox Jewish community in West Hempstead, New York.[2] Though Mr. Englendar claims to have been raised in "a little Jewish biosphere," where he received "an old-style shtetl-mentality education,"[3] some critics scoff at the suggestion that his Modern Orthodox Jewish upbringing could be considered cloistered.[4]

Englander attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County for high school, and is an alumnus of the State University of New York at Binghamton.[5]

Three of his short stories have appeared in editions of "The Best American Short Stories"; "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" appeared in the 2000 edition, with guest editor E.L. Doctorow, and "How We Avenged the Blums" appeared in the 2006 edition, guest edited by Ann Patchett.

The Ministry of Special Cases, the long-awaited follow-up to his debut, was released on April 24, 2007. The novel is set in 1976 in Buenos Aires during Argentina's "Dirty War."

Englander currently lives in New York.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Malcolm Jones, Newsweek, March 29, 1999
  2. ^ Gussow, Mel. "Captured in Stories, The World He Left; For Author's Debut, Tales of Orthodox Jews", The New York Times, July 5, 1999. "Mr. Englander, who grew up in West Hempstead on Long Island, now lives in Jerusalem, and in that is one of the many paradoxes of his life."
  3. ^ Jones, ibid
  4. ^ "I grew up with Shalom Auslander in Monsey, New York," said author David Srullowitz. "We had the 'street cred' to claim that kind of background. We looked at guys like Nathan as almost goyim; they watched cable TV at home, and went to a school with girls in the classrooms and where Talmud study took a backseat to hockey practice."
  5. ^ Shalit, Wendy. "The Observant Reader", The New York Times, January 30, 2005. Accessed October 29, 2007. "Englander is about as much a product of the shtetl as John Kerry. He actually attended the coeducational Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, the State University of New York, Binghamton, and the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

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