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Shop nowKing of the Jews
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Learn moreThis masterpiece of black humor has taken its place among the great classics of Holocaust literature. Set in Poland, it is the story of I.C. Trumpleman, the indiscreet director of an orphanage. When the Germans invade and the Jewish community is forced into a ghetto, Trumpleman is chosen as the head of a Judenrat, granted the power to decide who will live and who will starve. By turns a con man, charismatic leader, and merciless dictator, Trumpelman reveals himself as an extraordinarily complex protagonist.
King of the Jews continues to be an extraordinary vision of occupied Poland, and offers stunning insight through the trappings of history to questions of equal moral complexity today.
Leslie Epstein, whose father and uncle, Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein, wrote Arsenic and Old Lace, Casablanca, and many other classics of the golden era of films, is the author of eight works of fiction, including Pandaemonium and Pinto and Sons. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, and has for many years directed the Creative Writing Program at Boston University.
David Hilder is a stage, film, and television actor. He has narrated unabridged audiobooks for over eighteen years and has recorded more than two hundred titles, spanning works of fiction and nonfiction.
Reviews
“Remarkable. A lesson in what artistic restraint can do to help us imagine the dark places in our history.”
“The first novel about the Holocaust that manages to be adequate to its own ambition.”
“The best book yet to be written on the Holocaust. A superb novel.”
“Profoundly daring…Epstein can summon up life from the bottom of despair.”
“Epstein has done the impossible…He has shown what the power of art—of his art—can reveal of the depths of the unspeakable.”
“Mature, brilliantly sustained, thoroughly engrossing.”
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