Making the Rounds - Softcover

Weiss, Allan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1770531165 ISBN 13: 9781770531161

Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

WHO CAN HELP...

...when a word decides to get up and leave your holy book?
...when you’re a mayor and your city is literally crumbling around you?
...when the evil Haman, villain of the Purim story, seems to have arisen from the dead to terrorize your town?

Eliezer ben-Avraham, wizard, Kabbalist, and kvetch, not only can but must help. Because he poked around in areas of forbidden knowledge, he is obliged to wander the world and use the powers he gained to perform good deeds—mitzvot—for anybody who asks, no matter how bizarre the task. Ably assisted by his trusty but cynical steed, Melech, Eliezer does what he can, although transforming into a bird and flying around is difficult when you have arthritis in your shoulder.

Humorous, philosophical, and very weird, Eliezer’s adventures as he makes his rounds demonstrate how important it is to be generous with your gifts, even to the craziest goyim.

About this title

About the Author

Allan Weiss was born in Montreal and lives in Toronto, where he teaches English and Humanities at York University. He has published over two dozen short stories, both mainstream and genre, in various periodicals and anthologies, including Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Windsor Review, On Spec, and Tesseracts 4, 7, and 9. His story collection Living Room appeared in 2001. He earned his B.A. (1979) and M.A. (1980) in English from Concordia University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1985.

As a scholar, he specializes in Canadian fiction and fantastic literature, and has published numerous articles on these topics and on the short story. He has also delivered papers at conferences in various countries in Europe and Asia as well as North America. He is the Chair of the Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, which is held every two years in Toronto, and edited a recent volume of proceedings of that conference, The Canadian Fantastic in Focus.

Review

"All the magic of Harry Potter with none of the phony gravitas: all the self-deprecating humour of Phillip Roth, but with a much-improving supernatural air." -Cory Doctorow

"Making the Rounds is a book that all should be able to enjoy. On the one hand, Jews should be delighted to read fantasy stories set within their culture. On the other hand, non-Jews might find the book exotic (not a bad thing for fantasy), but they will also find it easily accessible, with most concepts taken from Judaism explained for a non-Jewish audience. (It doesn't hurt that some ideas in fantasy come from Jewish mysticism: the idea, for instance, that magic derives from the power of words has its genesis in the Kaballah, as is mentioned in more than one of the stories in the collection.)" - Ira Nayman, Amazing Stories Magazine

Edition details

• Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1770531165
• ISBN 13: 9781770531161
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 200