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Baltimore Jewish Times Book Review of "The Game of Opposites".rss feedComments (0)

The Game of Opposites

September 11, 2009

Karen Segall
Special to the Jewish Time

Norman Lebrecht
Pantheon Books 2009, $24.95, 336 pages (hardcover), $24.95

In an anonymous country at the end of World War II, Paul Miller escapes from a labor camp, limps a few feet, and collapses just before he reaches the town that ignored the camp and those who suffered in its midst.

He is hidden and nursed back to health by Alice, the local innkeeper’s daughter. Paul and Alice fall in love and, when the war ends, they marry and have children. A skilled engineer, Paul helps rebuild the placid little town and eventually rises to become its mayor.

But as much as Paul tries to bury his past, forcefully putting his life prior to and during the war behind him, he is haunted by those times as well as by the fact that the people he now considers friends stood by and did nothing to abate the suffering of he and his fellow prisoners.

When the camp’s sadistic commandant returns to the village, Paul must decide whether to continue leading the peaceful life he has built or seek revenge for the terror he endured.

Should he forgive and forget or take a stand and fight?

Exploring the oft-considered themes of good and evil, forgiveness and revenge, and our ability as humans to choose between them, “The Game of Opposites” is an original and poignant novel with vivid, complicated characters.

Lebrecht is a fluid, beautiful writer who paints a portrait of a man, a town and a life that manages to be both simple and complex. He tackles a large moral dilemma and creates a page-turner from it.

“The Game of Opposites” is a small story that raises big questions about how far we will go to live a life of love without forgetting the past that brought us to the threshold of our present.

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2007 Jewish Book Award Finalists

Finalists for the 2007 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, administered the Jewish Book Council, have been announced. The $100,000 prize, the largest of its kind in the Jewish literary world, honors an emerging author in the field of Jewish literature who has written a book of exceptional literary merit that stimulates an interest in Jewish themes.

Finalists are: Ilana M. Blumberg for "Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books"; Eric L. Goldstein for "The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity"; Lucette Lagnado for "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World"; Michael Makovsky for "Churchill's Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft"; and Haim Watzman for "A Crack in the Earth: A Journey Up Israel's Rift Valley."

The inaugural Rohr Prize, awarded in 2006, went to Tamar Yellin for "The Genizah at the House of Shepher.”

2006 Jewish Book Winners

The National Jewish Book Association announced its 2006 award winners and finalists in a variety of categories. The winners are:

Jewish Book of the Year:
"A Code of Jewish Ethics" by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
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American Jewish Studies:
Winner:
"Emma Lazarus" by Esther Schor
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Finalists:
"The Price of Whiteness" by Eric L. Goldstein
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"Crown Heights" by Edward Shapiro
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Anthologies and Collections
Winner:
"Writing a Modern Jewish History" by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
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Finalists:
"Scribblers on the Roof" by Melvin Jules Bukiet and David G. Roskies
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"Daughters of Sarah" by Eva Martin Santori
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Biography and Autobiography
Winner:
"The Lost" by Daniel Mendelsohn
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Finalists:
"This Has Happened" by Piera Sonnino and Ann Goldstein
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"A Family of Strangers" by Deborah Tall
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Children's and Young Adult Literature
Winner:
"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak
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Finalists:
"Solomon and the Ant" by Sheldon Oberman and Peninnah Schram
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"Yellow Star" by Jennifer Roy
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Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice
Winner:
"Fragmented Families" by Ellen Sucov
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Finalists:
"The Jewish Book of Days" by Jill Hammer
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"Auschwitz" by Laurence Rees
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Eastern European Studies
Winner:
"Caviar and Ashes" by Marci Shore
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Finalists:
"Men of Silk" by Glenn Dynner
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"Fear" by Jan T. Gross
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Education and Jewish Identity
Winner:
"Building Jewish Roots" by Faydra Shapiro
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Finalist:
"Rethinking Synagogues" by Lawrence A. Hoffman
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Fiction
Winner:
"The World To Come" by Dara Horn
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Finalists:
"Accidents" by Yael Hedaya
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"Disobedience" by Naomi Alderman
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"Golden Country" by Jennifer Gilmore
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History
Winner:
"Becoming Eichmann" by David Cesarani
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Holocaust
Winner:
"The Enemy" by Jeffrey Hart
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Jewish Family Literature
Winner:
"Lilith's Ark" by Deborah Bodin Cohen
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Women's Studies
Winner:
"Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?" by Shaya Cohen
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