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The Ministry of Special Cases

3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 · rating details · 1,822 ratings · 327 reviews

The long-awaited novel from Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Englander’s wondrous and much-heralded collection of stories won the 2000 Pen/Malamud Award and was translated into more than a dozen languages.

From its unforgettable opening scene in the darkness of a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires, The Ministry of Special Cases casts a powerf...more

Hardcover, 339 pages

Published April 24th 2007 by Knopf (first published 2007)

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Aug 02, 2008 G rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: middle-ground

Problematic. Englander is an adept, even-handed writer, but not an amazing stylist; worse, I never believed that the story was set in Argentina at all (it would have been better as a Kafka-esque "no place"), and I didn't find it as engaging as I would have hoped. But a good effort nonetheless.

Upon rereading, I was struck by many of the scenes but underwhelmed by the lack of cohesion - the whole was less than the sum of its parts.

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Jan 18, 2009 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have been interested in “the disappeared” (Los Desaparecidos ) of Argentina since I visited that country in the mid-90ies several times and saw the mothers marching in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada (pink house, president’s residence and seat of government). That’s what drew me to this book.
The setting is Buenos Aires in 1976. The main characters are Kaddish Poznan and his wife, Lillian. They are not only Jewish, but Kaddish is literally a hijo de puta (son of a whore) and his “...more I have been interested in “the disappeared” (Los Desaparecidos ) of Argentina since I visited that country in the mid-90ies several times and saw the mothers marching in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada (pink house, president’s residence and seat of government). That’s what drew me to this book.
The setting is Buenos Aires in 1976. The main characters are Kaddish Poznan and his wife, Lillian. They are not only Jewish, but Kaddish is literally a hijo de puta (son of a whore) and his “job” is defacing gravestones in the Jewish cemetery for whores and pimps for their descendents who want to erase their past, free their identity from the stain of their ancestors. And erasing the past and transforming identity are major themes in the novel. Lillian is a more conventional Jew, belonging to the “respectable” Jewish congregation. She works for an insurance agent, actually the main support of the family. Kaddish and Lillian have a son, Pato, who’s a university student. Kaddish and Pato battle constantly. On the day that Pato is arrested, Kaddish in his fury tells his son he wishes he’d never been born.
Kaddish and Lillian are both devastated at the arrest of their son, especially as they realize no official of the government will admit that Pato is even in custody or in fact ever existed. They handle their grief and frustration so entirely differently that the conflict between them deepens. Lillian assumes there are government channels one has to go through to get information. She soon knows every police station in the city intimately and sits every day at the Ministry of Special Cases hoping for a hearing. Kaddish’s strategy is less straightforward. In one of the more hilarious (in a book that’s basically painfully tragic) incidents of the book, before his son disappears, Kaddish is owed money by a plastic surgeon whose family graves he has “disappeared”. The doctor convinces him to accept payment in kind and Kaddish negotiates nose jobs for himself, Lillian and Pato. Pato refuses—not wanting to change his identity. Kaddish volunteers to go first and gets a first rate job; Lillian, whom he was trying to protect by going first, gets an intern and her new nose falls off and has to be redone—which Kaddish manages to badger the doctor into doing. Changing the nose, especially for a Jew, is tantamount to changing identity; Lillian, who is now beautiful, is devastated when a policeman to whom she shows a picture of her son, says it can’t be her son with that big nose.
A Kaddish is a prayer in the Jewish liturgy and the term is especially associated with a prayer of mourning. Both the history of Argentina of this period and Kaddish’s name warn the reader that Pato will never be found alive. Students and intellectuals were targeted by the regime and most often “disappeared”. Kaddish eventually encounters a navigator who, full of guilt in his role, tells him how the regime disposes of the disappeared, pushing them out of airplanes into the river delta. That convinces Kaddish that Pato is dead, but when he goes to the rabbi to arrange a funeral, it seems that Jewish practice doesn’t allow that without a body. Lillian throws him out because he won’t keep the faith that Pato is alive and coming back. She has met a priest roaming the Ministry of Special Cases who tells her that a great amount of money can buy information about the disappeared and sometimes even a release. Pato, not believing in her solution but realizing he can’t live her lie and can’t live without her goes back to the plastic surgeon who advises him to kidnap someone himself and demand a ransome. That Kaddish’s conscience cannot tolerate but he can “ply his trade” and steal the bones of a prominent family from the famous Recoleta cemetery [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Recol...] and hold those for ransome…
This novel was not entirely successful. The marriage of Jewish tradition and Argentinean history of the 1970ies just doesn’t work. The saga of a disappeared son is too painful to be contemplated, and Englander doesn’t succeed completely moving the reader from the literal events to the larger concepts he seems to be trying for. There is no ending to Pato’s story—the mothers still march in the Plaza de Mayo (which practice is not, by the way, featured in the novel)—as the reader knows neither he nor his body will be found and that tragedy trumps all the richness and the humor of Kaddish and Lillian’s story.
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Dec 23, 2008 Nate D rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Jun 20, 2008 Erika Jo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Once again, a hip, young, Jewish, Brooklyn-ish* novelist. I told myself to take it slowly, reading them consecutively would be like lighting one cigarette off the back of another. Don't even get me started on my decision to read an excellent poetry book by the 24-year-old Tao Lin directly following this read (inspiring a "Fuck You, Tao/Tao Lin Jealousy Poem"). I was prompted to read this book from a laudatory review in Poets and Writers of Englander's debut collection of short stories, and the a...more Once again, a hip, young, Jewish, Brooklyn-ish* novelist. I told myself to take it slowly, reading them consecutively would be like lighting one cigarette off the back of another. Don't even get me started on my decision to read an excellent poetry book by the 24-year-old Tao Lin directly following this read (inspiring a "Fuck You, Tao/Tao Lin Jealousy Poem"). I was prompted to read this book from a laudatory review in Poets and Writers of Englander's debut collection of short stories, and the anticipatory seven-years it took for him to write another piece. Enough of this half-baked editorializing.

An interesting piece of historical fiction, set during Argentina's Dirty War in 1976. It is a fertile topic, made more complex by the protagonist's paranoid Jewishness, doubly so by his pariah status as Jewish outcast (as a hijo de puta). By protagonist, I mean the father (aptly named "Kaddish") of a dysfunctional three person family. The son, a bright university student, gets disappeared and the couple struggle to cope in different ways. I was impressed by Englander's depiction of a somewhat unsexy set-up, a middle-aged squabbling pair of Yids, who consistently fail in all things logistical (minus the mother, Lillian, the breadwinner, who works - ironically (!) in insurance).

The plot's pace is compelling, but the piece overall is bottom-heavy, squishing all the rich symbolism towards the end in a series of somewhat-forced meaningful revelations. Arguments between son and father are painful - clearly, these are two people who communicate in very different ways - but I felt it was at times relentless and sloppily done: the father is missing a father and so doesn't know how to be a father (tada!), the grass-smoking, free-thinking son is part of an expressive new generation (zing!), sometimes love requires pain (ouch!). Regardless, it is an accomplished, vivid novel but I don't think it's the masterwork Englander may be capable of as his craft matures.

*I realize Chabon was born in DC and lives in Berkeley. Consider it "metropolitan" if you must. (less)

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Oct 19, 2007 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," this is the tale of hard-boiled Jewish protagonist trying to make sense of a world that is rapidly deteriorating around him. But while Chabon went for affect and genre mimicry, Englander goes for a more soulful approach—the results are both more sober and more satisfying. Yet, Englander's book is far from perfect. There's not a whole lot going on during a long central act, and uninterrupted anguish can be as numbing as riveting. For a book in which...more

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Sep 01, 2007 Michele rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: you

As I just finished this, it may take me a while to process my exact thoughts. There isn't a lot of florid description here of Argentina in the 70s or the Jewish community of Buenos Aires at that time, and yet the author still managed to make both these seem very present, despite never being wholly unveiled at any one point.

The protagonist is a pariah, neither at home in his community nor outside of it, and he is deeply troubled and morally defiant about it. A similar struggle marks the more inti...more

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Jul 29, 2007 Wendy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book more. Really. The setting of the book -- the "dirty war" in Argentina, when so many young people disappeared, seemed particularly interesting. But I found it a bit too heavy handed for me. The main character is engaged, for example, of erasing the sordid past of the Jewish communty (though it's a past that he, alone, seeks to remember). Plus his name, Kaddish, is the Jewish prayer for remembering the dead. Then his son is "disappeared" by the government, effectively er...more

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Aug 27, 2007 Jacquelyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

I didnt think I would like this book as much as I did--it got so much press before it came out that I thought it was too good to be true. But, it ended up being a really compelling story about a jewish family in Argentina during the dirty war. Their son gets "disappeared" and they have no one to turn to b/c of their status in society--b/c of their past even the jewish community wont help them. There is not a ton of dialogue, which really creates the mood that everything is being watched and noth...more

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Oct 14, 2008 Blake rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A pretty good book on an interesting topic (Argentina's "Dirty War") and one family's emotional journey through it, the author does a great job of developing the characters' emotional states while keeping the overall tone very light-hearted. But looking back, the primary action takes place in the last 1/3 of the book and I can't really remember much what took place leading up to that other than just broad development.

All in all a good read that turns great when the story finally picks up during...more

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Feb 10, 2011 Lizzy added it · review of another edition

This review was written by Judith Ruderman and posted by Lizzy Mottern

As the New Yorker observed in introducing its recent “20 under forty” series, “the fiction being written in this country today is not necessarily fiction set in this country.” A prime example of such fiction is The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander. To my mind it is among the best of American contemporary novels, and I nominated it for the summer reading project for the class of ‘15. The book takes place in Argenti...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Pete Young rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It must have been heartbreaking all over again for the Argentine mothers of the Disappeared to end their protests back in 2006. There are inevitably several non-fiction works available on this dark period of Argentina’s history but little in the form of fiction other than The Ministry of Special Cases. It must be among the best there is, in English at least, as the focus is on one family as it is torn apart by the casual cruelties of a paranoid government. Kaddish Poznan is a family man in 1976...more It must have been heartbreaking all over again for the Argentine mothers of the Disappeared to end their protests back in 2006. There are inevitably several non-fiction works available on this dark period of Argentina’s history but little in the form of fiction other than The Ministry of Special Cases. It must be among the best there is, in English at least, as the focus is on one family as it is torn apart by the casual cruelties of a paranoid government. Kaddish Poznan is a family man in 1976 Buenos Aires, an aimless outsider by day but, with the political climate as uncertain as it is, by night he has created for himself the unusual job of erasing the family names of his hijo de puta clients from their headstones in the city’s forgotten Jewish cemetery. There’s a military coup on the horizon and worse in the shape of the Dirty War, and when Poznan’s teenage son enters that catalogue of the Disappeared he can only appeal to the strange labyrinthine bureaucracy that is the Ministry of Special Cases for any semblance of justice.

This debut novel has a masterfully burlesque yet confident beginning, necessary to establish Poznan’s colourful family history and the range of experiences that brought Buenos Aires its arm of the Jewish diaspora, but this quickly settles down as Poznan’s small family is revealed to be a typically ordinary one. Unexpectedly, and despite the seriousness of the subject, Englander finds plenty of opportunity for black humour (mostly revolving around plastic surgery), but he also explores many serious themes via a cast of shadowy characters, the impenetrable web of government lies and the absolute need for hope in a hopeless situation. This is obviously a broader subject than just being purely a Jewish experience therefore in some way it’s fortunate that Englander doesn’t consider himself to be a ‘Jewish’ writer, but it’s all too easy to see how this novel was his labour of love, eight years in the writing, and it deserves to be considered a triumph. He pulls you around by the heartstrings with a drama that reads easily but is always engaging, and his main problem must have been how to end the story of an unending nightmare. He handles it rather well if perhaps, inevitably, a little inconclusively, but this still comes highly recommended.(less)

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Nov 05, 2012 Ubik 2.0 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

“Il Ministero dei Casi speciali” è un libro dall’andamento anomalo, bizzarro con una prima metà in cui l’autore riesce con disinvoltura estrema, forse anche eccessiva, a raccontare una storia sudamericana mescolando il registro grottesco e quello tragico.

Nelle prime pagine non si riesce a capire chi sta facendo cosa, chi siano davvero i protagonisti e cosa diamine facciano per procurarsi da vivere: occorre rileggerle più di una volta per farsi strada in una sconclusionata vicenda di cimiteri ebr...more

“Il Ministero dei Casi speciali” è un libro dall’andamento anomalo, bizzarro con una prima metà in cui l’autore riesce con disinvoltura estrema, forse anche eccessiva, a raccontare una storia sudamericana mescolando il registro grottesco e quello tragico.

Nelle prime pagine non si riesce a capire chi sta facendo cosa, chi siano davvero i protagonisti e cosa diamine facciano per procurarsi da vivere: occorre rileggerle più di una volta per farsi strada in una sconclusionata vicenda di cimiteri ebraici, di associazioni di puttane, di lapidi da manomettere per cancellarne l’iscrizione.

Poi su questo incipit piuttosto demenziale, ma non privo di divertimento, si insinua poco alla volta (soprattutto per il lettore non bene a conoscenza della successione temporale degli avvenimenti storici) una sensazione minacciosa di cose che non sono come dovrebbero essere: un carro armato di traverso in un incrocio del centro, persone conosciute indirettamente che non si sa più dove siano finite.

Solo quando ci si imbatte nel nome del generale Videla, si comprende di essere sprofondati in uno degli avvenimenti più agghiaccianti della seconda metà del 900: il golpe argentino e la straziante e prolungata tragedia dei desaparecidos.

Non si ha tempo di riprendersi da tale rivelazione e il romanzo vira verso un’imprevista e folle vicenda di chirurgia estetica, determinante per le ripercussioni psicologiche che avrà sui protagonisti e per l’importanza che suo malgrado assumerà il personaggio tragicomico del chirurgo. In queste pagine centrali del libro vi sono spiazzanti pagine da “comica finale” con nasi che si staccano e situazioni estreme, quasi “alla Palahniuk”.

Peccato che dalla metà in poi questo audace giro sulle montagne russe lasci il posto al prevalere prima relativo e poi assoluto della tragedia, col dramma dei genitori alle prese con una burocrazia che definire kafkiana è un complimento, con finti intermediari e veri assassini di massa: la disperazione invade la scena in cui si dibattono Kaddish e Lilian e si spegne ogni speranza.
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Nov 04, 2012 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nathan Englander’s The Ministry of Special Cases introduced me to the history of the disappeared in Argentina in the 1970s. Until reading the book I knew nothing at all about the country or its history, and yet I can’t help feeling I should have known this history, horrific and terrifying as it is.

The novel introduces the military junta, the kidnappings and the murders so slowly and with such hesitance - we first follow a mother, father and son, and then, after the son, Pato, is disappeared, jus...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Lane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not an easy read because of the context (torture and disappearances in the aftermath of the Argentinan coupe in the 70's), but I was somewhat prepared as I had read his book of short stories, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" (which I highly recommend). After I finished the book I watched a few brief video interviews with the author, Nathan Englander, and one of his comments was that he needs to write a "pressurized novel." His apparent meaning is that, in this case, he spent ten years distil...more

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Sep 13, 2009 jordan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nathan Englander's short story collection, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" received accolades and awards when it debuted five years ago, all well deserved. Now, after five-years, Englander offers his first novel, "The Ministry of Special Cases." If any thought that the fresh pathos laden voice of "Relief" was a fluke, "Ministry" will surely set them straight.

First, a brief review of the plot. The place is Argentina in the 70's under the reign of a military junta that snaps citizens up witho...more

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May 21, 2009 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: immigrant-lit

A RATHER grim sense of humour is one of the hallmarks of Jewish American
literature. Writers like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow made their names kvetching about the human condition, the shadow of the Holocaust in the not-so-ancient past informing the neuroses of their New World progeny.

In their footsteps comes Nathan Englander, born into an Orthodox Jewish family in upstate New York. He made a splash with his first book, a collection of short stories titled For The Relief Of Unbearable Urges (1999)...more

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Jan 16, 2011 Natalia Pì rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, americalatina

I found this book very good, and very sad. Set in Buenos Ayres in the 1970's, it starts by telling us the everyday life of a Jewish family: mother, father and son, with all the everyday contrasts that are typical in a family with a young son who seems to be growing apart from his parents.
Then something happens, and through the story of this family, Englander tries to imagine how it must have been for people during the Argentinian dictatorship, what hopes and fears they felt in a time where it wa...more

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Dec 06, 2010 Ann rated it 5 of 5 stars

A heartbreaking narrative that follows the nightmare world of a husband and wife who just lost their only son to Argentina's military junta. Thirty-thousand students disappeared in 1970's Brazil, you no one admitted it was happening. So Kaddish and Lillian work at cross purposes as they attempt to find out what happened. Lillian takes the accepted way of visiting jails and talking to bureaucrats who contend her son never existed. Kaddish turns to the underworld and hears horrible tales of studen...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Elliot A. rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is Englander's first and thus far only novel-length project. He has two or three (can't recall) short story collections, the latest "What We tTalk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" is fantastic. What truly sets this author apart is the way he builds narrative tension by using an economy of language echoing both 'dirty realism' and the buoyant, folk-tale inspired charm of yiddish fiction. But where his short tales move effortlessly between love, dread, and comic incantations, The Ministry...more

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Sep 10, 2009 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Even though I did not love this book in the way I loved Nathan Englander's short story collection, I have to say that there were several things I really liked about this book. First of all, it was a topic that I am familiar with, even though reading non-fiction accounts of this period in Argentina's history has always been too much for me emotionally. I owe Mr. Englander respect for the fact that he got me to read a novel about this (and pretty quickly!) without once breaking down. In addition t...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Sarabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars

This books started really strong. I loved the idea of a separate cemetery for the declined society of Jewish pimps and whores. The idea of erasing names from tombstones was also ingenious, and definitely made one think about past and present. The plastic surgery bit was so evocative it made me squirm.

However, at a certain point, the whole book started declining, as the novelty of the absurd decreased and the tedium increased. (This for me is easy to tell- some books keep you hooked until the end...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Eight years ago Nathan Englander published his acclaimed short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. He brings the same historical profundity to his first novel. While focusing on the pessimistic Kaddish, whose name honors the dead, and his optimistic wife, Englander tells a much larger story about terrorist regimes and asks universal questions about remembering the dead, dealing with evil, and addressing assimilation, love, ritual, and generational gaps. Most reviewers praised t

...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Hasan rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Ministry of Special Cases takes place in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s, at the start of the Argentine Dirty War. The main characters are the three members of a Jewish family. The father, Kaddish, makes his living removing the names of Jews from tombstones in a cemetery for Jews that had been pimps and prostitutes and criminals in general. He is paid to do this by their successful off springs who wish to have no connection with a seedy past. Kaddish’s son, Pato a college student, joins him o...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Jane rated it 1 of 5 stars

My rating "didn't like it" doesn't mean I think this is not a well-written, perhaps even a brilliant, book. I just couldn't take it. The combination of Jewish humor/style and the horror of the Peron regime in Argentina was simply too much for me. The books is about a hundred kinds of disappearances. It begins with "disappearing" the names of the disreputable Jews in an Argentinian cemetery. This is Kaddish's job. He is a prostitute's son and works chipping away at the names (and therefore family...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Jayne Charles rated it 4 of 5 stars

A profoundly depressing and harrowing story set in 1970s Argentina where people are disappearing, never to be seen again, and the authorities are denying that anything is wrong.

The novel follows Jewish couple Kaddish and Lillian as they search for their nineteen year old son, and as the months go by the desperation sets in. It is a stifling experience, page after page in their company as they head up blind alleys and come up against bureaucracy time and time again, but in terms of involving the...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Fionnuala rated it 3 of 5 stars

A failure, but an interesting failure. Englander tries to pull off a tragicomedy about Argentina's Dirty War, and almost does it. Let down by a couple of overworked metaphors (the nose stuff gets a bit much), over-artsy descriptions (the falling general embodies every creative writing cliché) and some clunky authorial interventions (Englander doesn't need to tell us why he isn't revealing the content of the missing son's notes - the silence would have said so much more than his narratorial justi...more

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Dec 06, 2008 Becky rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

as a latin american studies major, i was particularly drawn to this novel about a jewish couple whose only child is "disappeared" during the argentine dirty war, but you really don't need any background in the subject matter to appreciate the story. the general plot is foreseeable, but the details are rich and unexpected, and englander has a really pretty writing style (although his dialogue is a bit unrealistic -- his characters talk just like the narrator). i was expecting this book to be supe...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Alison rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Things are never looking up when you finish a book and think, Well, I didn't hate it...

The are two problems that I see with this book: the setting and the characters. First, the setting. It is not at all accessible for the average American reader (or even one with a history degree). I have no background in Argentina whatsoever, and found it very difficult then to navigate the setting, both time and place. I didn't get a good sense of what the place looked like; the apartment, yes, but not Argent...more Things are never looking up when you finish a book and think, Well, I didn't hate it...

The are two problems that I see with this book: the setting and the characters. First, the setting. It is not at all accessible for the average American reader (or even one with a history degree). I have no background in Argentina whatsoever, and found it very difficult then to navigate the setting, both time and place. I didn't get a good sense of what the place looked like; the apartment, yes, but not Argentina. In terms of time, I wasn't sure what details the author pulled from history and what details he created. This might not seems important given that it's a work of fiction, but I like to know where I stand. Take Inglorious Basterds for example. That movie is set in World War II, true. But it involves an Apache-like gang of Jewish American soldiers hunting and killingr Nazis. Not so historically accurate. I don't care that it's not, I just like to kno that. And with WWII I do, because I know that time and place well enough most Americans reading this type of fiction probably do. But I question how many know Argentina, and I wonder if the book wouldn't hae benefited from a historical introduction? Or if something like that I even ever done.

Second, the characters. I did not sympathize with anyone. I thought Pato was an asshole kid; I thought Kaddish was a loser; I thought Lillian was delusional, even with good reason. I just could not identify with any of them in really any way, and there was an aloofness about the narrator that I think made it worse I did not feel this was for his short stories, so thats why I question the narrator.

There were some good points, of course. I thought the third part was very well written, especially the scene with the girl who occupies Pato's former cell. That was exceptionally well done. I also thought, even though I didn't like therm much, the characters were well developed and consistent, with a detail you don't really find in many characters, especially the minor ones like the Doctor or the general's wife.

My last major bone to pick was the ending. I know I know - let the author decide. And usually I go with that. But the book is about a kid being abducted, first and foremost, so I reallly would have liked to find out what happened. Instead, much like Kaddish and Lillian, the author is given two scenarios to choose from: believe the priest, and Patos alive but out of reach for lack of money. Believe the navigator, and Pato is long since dead, and there's nothing anyone could have done about it. That's fine for them, but given I am the reader, I wanted to know!

That said, I do think the author did a good job with a difficult task. I look forward to reading more of his work.(less)

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Aug 29, 2009 Corny rated it 4 of 5 stars

I probably did not appreciate this book in the fullest manner because I did not have a clear understanding of the background in Argentina during the 70s and 80s when the Junta took charge. Nevertheless, this extraordinary look at a couple facing the loss of its only son is universal in scope. Sometimes black, sometimes very touching, the narrative reveals the hopelessness of finding the "disappeared." The indomitable spirit of Lilian and the unending schemes of her husband Kaddish come together...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Teresa marked it as did-not-finish

Since I enjoyed Englander's first short-story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (his works have great titles), I decided to try his novel before reading his next collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories.

Either the style of this novel is different from his stories I read (some of which I do remember though it's been awhile), or his style is not conducive to a novel, because I'm not interested in reading beyond the ninety-something pages I did read, thoug...more

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About Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1999. The volume won widespread critical acclaim, earning Englander the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kauffman Prize, and established him as an important write...more

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Books by Nathan Englander

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

The Twenty-seventh Man: A Short Story from For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

The Tumblers: A Short Story from For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

For The Relief of Unbearable Urges: Short Story

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“Harder than waking from a nightmare was trying to wake herself into one.” — 2 people liked it

“Čovjekovo pravo biće pokazuje se u tri slučaja. Kad je posrijedi novac, kad govori u srdžbi i kad je pijan.” — 1 person liked it

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The Ministry of Special Cases

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