UnAmericans - Softcover

Antopol, Molly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007548834 ISBN 13: 9780007548835

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2015

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENGLISH PEN DEBUT FICTION PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD `The UnAmericans' is a debut story collection of great poise A former dissident from Communist-era Prague fears his daughter's new play will cast him in an unflattering light. A divorced dry cleaner tries to move on, bemused by his daughter's reawakened faith. A Hollywood actor is imprisoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and has a fraught reunion with his son. A young Israeli journalist, left unemployed after America's most recent economic crash, begins dating a middle-aged widower. And in the book's final story, a tour de force spanning three continents and three generations of women, a young American and her Israeli husband are forced to reconsider their marriage after the death of her art-collecting grandmother. This collection is a stunning exploration of characters shaped by the forces of history. Each finely turned story presents a different, morally suspenseful problem. Arranging and resolving these problems, Molly Antopol writes with an orchestral richness, in fiction that is intricately but delicately composed. But `The UnAmericans' is remarkable as much for its heart as its sophistication: each voice is humane, full of warmth and wit; each page brims with a love of life. The result is a debut collection with the power not only to absorb and thrill, but to move.

About this title

About the Author:

Molly Antopol is a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University, where she currently teaches as a Jones Lecturer. Her short stories have appeared in numerous American publications, and she has received special mention in `Best American Short Stories'. Her essays and reviews appear in the `San Francisco Chronicle', `The Rumpus' and NPR's `This American Life'. She lives in San Francisco and Tel Aviv.

From Booklist:

In her first story collection, Antopol explores the everyday anxieties and complex past lives of immigrant characters in New York boroughs and Old World homelands, including Kiev, Tel Aviv, and Brooklyn. In “Duck and Cover,” a widowed father struggles to keep secret his involvement with the Communist Party in McCarthy-era Los Angeles, while his daughter discovers her sexuality in a neighbor’s fall-out shelter. In “The Quietest Man,” a former dissident from Czechoslovakia must confront the facts of his estranged daughter’s new play, which he selfishly worries will hurt his reputation. In another story, a grandmother in Queens recounts the questionable ethics of a wartime brigade called the Yiddish Underground, common citizens who fought the Nazi occupation of Jewish communities, such as the sizable “lost shtetl” of Antopol, Belarus. In these stories, Antopol depicts with bold strokes and uncanny intelligence the intimate links between family, history, and politics, never failing to capture the grit and hurt of intergenerational confrontation. Honored as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, Antopol enters American fiction with startling originality and honesty. --Diego Báez

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0007548834
• ISBN 13: 9780007548835
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272