Passage from Home

This outstanding family novel, set in a Jewish neighborhood of Chicago, is "the fullest articulation of the generational conflict between Jewish fathers and [sins]," writes Alexander Bloom in his 1986 book Prodigal Sons. The central character, a 15-year-old boy in rebellion against the petit bourgeois values of his family, engineers an affair between his flamboyant aunt and his easy-going Gentile cousin by marriage. He then leaves his father and moves into the house of this new couple, where he experiences the excitement and problems of an open relationship.

Isaac Rosenfeld (1918-1956) was one of the leading writers in the heyday of the Partisan Review, The Nation, Commentary, and Midstream; his work contributed to the intellectual debate in the 1940's and 1950's. Today he is considered one of the leading American intellectual critics of the century.