Classic, Short Stories

The first short story collection by the Hungarian-born author Edith Bruck was published to acclaim in Italy in 1962. After World War II, Bruck, a Holocaust survivor, settled in Rome where she wrote her fable-like stories, recounting the lives of poor Jewish families in Europe before, during, and immediately following the war.

In the title story, believed by some film scholars to have inspired the Oscar-winning movie Life Is Beautiful, a young girl shepherds her blind, sickly brother as they are deported. In “Matzoh Bread,” a child gets a painful glimpse of anti-Semitism when a friend tells her a legend about the unleavened bread Jews eat at Passover. In one of the more colorful stories, a hapless father whose business partners swindle him over a horse only tells the truth when he’s talking in his sleep.

 As we come across books that are described as having Jewish main characters, we add them to this database. The creators of the Jewish Genre Reading Challenge have not read all (or even most) of the books in this database. We have gathered information from many sources and not all may be accurate. Inclusion of a book in our database does not imply endorsement or approval. There is always the possibility that antisemitism may be present in a book, either written into a character's experience or through malicious or ignorant caricature or stereotypical portrayal of Jewish characters and culture. Please take care of yourselves as you read.

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