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Nathan Englander
Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fiction Fellow - Class of Fall 2009
Writer
Biography
Nathan Englander was born in Long Island, New York, in 1970. His short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and numerous anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Englander’s story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (Knopf, 1999), earned him a PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was selected as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker, and was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library in 2004. He published his first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, in 2007. His most recent books are The New American Haggadah, which he translated, edited by Jonathan Safran Foer, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, both published in 2012.
American Academy Project
Coward: A Novel
At the Academy, Englander is working on his second novel, set in Jerusalem, in the years between the two intifadas. Touching on the gigantic themes that make Jerusalem the city it is – politics and religion, race, culture, and violence – this novel, through the ex-pat community, will consider the radical positions outsiders bring to Jerusalem and the disparate dreams that people try to impose on it.
Lecture Summary
A Conversation with Nathan Englander
American Academy alumnus Nathan Englander returns to Berlin to read from his story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, just published in German. In eight masterful stories, Englander grapples with the weight of the past, the relationship between history and the present, and the place of the Holocaust in modern life. With humor, pathos, and astonishing dexterity, Englander presents unforgettable characters wrestling with issues of faith, justice, desire, and love. The result is an indispensable collection of contemporary classics. »
The Ministry of Special Cases
A move to Israel, Englander said, is so often a move for life, one foreseen if one is raised even in a relatively devout family. He left Israel, however, just before the second intifada, in September 2000. »