Katz or Cats: or, How Jesus Became My Rival in Love - Softcover

Leviant, Curt

9781945814457: Katz or Cats: or, How Jesus Became My Rival in Love

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1945814454 ISBN 13: 9781945814457

Publisher: Dzanc Books, 2018

Katz or Cats, or How Jesus Became My Rival in Love follows John, a book editor who meets an enigmatic man named Katz on his daily commute into New York. True to form, Katz has a book to pitch―not his own, but his brother’s, an identical twin also named Katz. The novel begins with another meeting on another train: brother Katz chances on a woman named Maria, who carries a pocket Bible and is missing the top digit of her ring finger.

The two embark on a whirlwind affair, alternately driven together and apart by their passion for each other and Maria’s religious fervor. But the story seems to change as soon as Katz tells it, and Katz himself has a great confession to make. As the lies that bind the tale together grow to new proportion, John comes to doubt the line between truth and fiction, as well as everything he thinks he knows about the man beside him on the train.

With the lyrical joy and lighthearted wordplay that have won him critical acclaim, Curt Leviant’s latest novel explores the very fabric of storytelling and whether life, like fiction, can be in constant flux.

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About the Author:

Curt Leviant is author of ten critically acclaimed works of fiction. He has won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Jerusalem Foundation, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, and the New Jersey Arts Council. His work has been included in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards, and other anthologies, and praised by two Nobel laureates: Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel. With the publication of Curt Leviant’s novels into French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Rumanian, Polish and other languages, reviewers have hailed his books as masterpieces and compared his imaginative fiction to that of Nabokov, Borges, Kafka, Italo Calvino, Vargas Llosa, Harold Pinter, and Tolstoy.

Review:

Praise for Kafka's Son

"From the award-winning author of The Yemenite Girl comes an enigmatic novel about identity and personal reinvention. Kafka’s Son is both a moving tribute to Franz Kafka and a story of fate and miracles, gathering events that span nearly a century and that are marked by small wonders and grand deceptions....Narrative twists and the intersection of disparate elements―literary history with mysticism, the Jewish past with family futures―are rendered with skill and intelligence. Kafka’s Son is a novel of uncommon beauty, both sharp in its humor and thick with ethical conundrum."
-- Jewish Book Council

"By following a labyrinthian circuit -- under the sign of Calvino and Perec -- Curt Leviant takes us along the trail of Kafka. Breathtaking! In the dark alleys, we see the ghosts of the past, with a parade of characters so Protean they could have stepped right of "The Metamorphosis." Curt Leviant blends fantasy and literary detection, while constructing a stunning maze. His magic lantern superbly recreates Kafka's now-forgotten Prague, a city that resembles a shadow play theater where everything is possible. As to whether or not Kafka had an heir, the answer is obvious. His name is Curt Leviant."- LIRE Magazine (France)

"The most impressive achievement of Kafka's Son is the way in which Curt Leviant, after opening up a truly awesome number of different trails, manages to bring them all together to give us the overall picture, just like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which suddenly seem to fall into place as if by magic. Kafka's Son is a realistic fantasy, a captivating maze, a detective novel, a love story, with multiple layers that never ceases to delight." - Magazine Litteraire (France)

"A true literary success. Here Prague reveals itself as a magical, bewitching, mysterious, perplexing city. Kafka’s Son is fascinating novel that, once finished, tempts you to take the first plane to Prague carrying a pile of Kafka's
books." - Art Press (France)

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