the_ministry_of_special_cases_englander
2009 Longlist

The Ministry of Special Cases

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

From its unforgettable opening scene in the darkness of a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires, The Ministry of Special Cases casts a powerful spell. In the heart of Argentina’s Dirty War, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who won’t accept him; strives for a wife who forever saves him; and spends his nights protecting the good name of a community that denies his existence–and denies a checkered history that only Kaddish holds dear. When the nightmare of the disappeared children brings the Poznan family to its knees, they are thrust into the unyielding corridors of the Ministry of Special Cases, the refuge of last resort.

Nathan Englander’s first novel is a timeless story of fathers and sons. In a world turned upside down, where the past and the future, the nature of truth itself, all take shape according to a corrupt government’s whims, one man–one spectacularly hopeless man–fights to overcome his history and his name, and, if for only once in his life, to put things right. Here again are all the marvelous qualities for which Englander’s first book was immediately beloved: his exuberant wit and invention, his cosmic sense of the absurd, his genius for balancing joyfulness and despair. Through the devastation of a single family, Englander captures, indelibly, the grief of a nation. The Ministry of Special Cases, like Englander’s stories before it, is a celebration of our humanity, in all its weakness, and–despite that–hope.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Nathan
Englander

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NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Suggested by a number of readers who were struck by Englander’s Kafkaesque tale about oppression set in Argentina during the Dirty War of the 1970’s.
Set in Argentina during the Dirty War of the 1970’s, a family is torn apart by their outcast Jewish ancestry, generational differences and a volatile political environment. Englander has skilfully written his debut novel with heartbreaking beauty and power.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
United States
Original Language
English
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf

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