Small Worlds series by Allen Hoffman (#01~2)
Requirements: ePUB & MOBI Reader | 780 kB | Version: Retail
Overview: ALLEN HOFFMAN, award-winning author of the novels Small Worlds and Big League Dreams, and of the collection Kagan’s Superfecta and Other Stories, was born in St. Louis and received his B.A. in American History from Harvard University. He studied the Talmud in yeshivas in New York and Jerusalem, and has taught in New York City schools. He and his wife and four children now live in Jerusalem. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Bar-Ilan University.
Genre: Historical Fiction
1. Small Worlds
Small Worlds, the first volume in Allen Hoffman’s critically acclaimed series Small Worlds, takes place in 1903 and introduces the wondrous rebbe of Krimsk—a small Hasidic settlement in Eastern Europe. Secluded in his study for the past five years, the beloved rebbe suddenly emerges on the eve of Tisha B’Av, the holiday for commemorating the destruction of the holy temple in Jerusalem. His congregants are overjoyed to see him, but their joy is to be short-lived, for this holiday at the dawn of the twentieth century will be marked by strange and momentous events that will change their lives forever. Small Worlds is the first in a series of novels concerning the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Poland, Russia, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the "small worlds" his characters inhabit.
Echoes of Jewish literary tradition can be heard in Small Worlds, especially the mystical realism of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the poignant humor of Sholom Aleichem, on whose tales Fiddler on the Roof is based.
2. Big League Dreams
Big League Dreams finds the Krimsk Rebbe and many of his flock in St. Louis on a Saturday, the Sabbath, in the summer of 1920.
In St. Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World seventeen years before. The rebbes former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of "gold in the streets" evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for the St. Louis Browns, is scheming to fix Saturdays game against the pennant-contending Detroit Tigers.
It is an American Sabbath: Prohibition, bookies, the criminal syndicate, the Hiberian fellowship of the police brass, hometown blondes, a bootlegging rabbi, and big league baseball. It is also Krimsk in America: Boruch Levi, the successful junkman, confiscates his zany, crippled brother-in-law Baraschs sizable bets; Baraschs lusty wife, Malka, has her own connubial reasons for wanting to stop the gambling; the chief of police fatefully inspires his loyal disciple, Boruch Levi, to bring Matti before the Krimsker Rebbe on the Sabbath in order to preserve the purity of the national pastime.
Recluse and wonder-worker, messianist and pragmatist, the Krimsker Rebbe navigates the muddy Mississippi River, haunted by a recurring prophetic vision of Pharaohs blood-red Nile. In the final, decisive innings, with Matti crouched behind home plate, it will come down to Ty Cobb versus the kabbalah.
Richly imagined, populated with robust, complex characters, Big League Dreams is a profoundly original, inspiring, and comic creation. It is the second volume in the series Small Worlds, which follows the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Russia, Poland, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the finite yet infinite "small worlds" his characters inhabit.
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3. Two for the Devil:
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