Hungry Hearts

by Francine Prose

Yiddish actress Dinah Rappoport's eventful performance in "The Dybbuk," the classic play of thwarted love and demonic possession has a galvanizing effect on players and audience alike and unexpected resonance in Dinah's life

213 pages, Paperback

First published January 12, 1983

About the author

Francine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent book is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Julie Whelan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book about 10 years ago and I am currently rereading it. It is so much fun. It tells the story of the Yiddish Art Theater and their South American tour. The narrator is the young lead actress Dinah Rappaport who is fresh, authentic and very humorous. She is in thrall to the great director Dalanshinsky and becomes possessed by the dybbuk of a flamboyant tango dancer from Buenos Aires who died doing air plane stunts over the harbor. A great read.

[Masha Shollar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very funny, weird in the best way book, following a Yiddish theater troupe in the 1920s that is touring South America with a performance of The Dybbuk, only to have their leading lady be possessed by an actual dybbuk. Full of strange coincidences, mysticism, and secrets, the book is gripping and the final two chapters, in particular, were so exquisitely detailed that you couldn't help but be pulled into the world.