Bad Jews

Name: Bad Jews
ISBN: 9780803293120

and Other Stories

Gerald Shapiro

Bad Jews and Other Stories is a nuanced and comic vision of life, love, and spiritual adventurism among the determinedly secular class of contemporary American Jews. Separated from the character-building hardships endured by their parents and grandparents, unable to find a faith of their own or for that matter to believe in much of anything at all, the characters of Bad Jews and Other Stories wander through the moral landscape of their lives in a loopy version of the Children of Israel's meandering way home. Along the way they suffer a range of antic, often absurd misadventures. And as often as not they find redemption as well as disaster.

"Bad Jews marks the emergence of another original voice on the contemporary Jewish American literary scene—a voice that registers in often richly comic and profoundly moving ways." —Forward

"Brimming with keen insight into the psyches of hilarious, even lovable, losers, the wacky brilliance of these remarkable stories marks Shapiro as a writer to watch." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Gerald Shapiro casts an incisive eye over his contemporaries." —New York Times Book Review

"Shapiro shows his readers the way home both emotionally and spiritually with his abiding compassion and tightly wound humor." —Booklist

About the Author

Gerald Shapiro (1950-2011) was the author of three acclaimed story collections, From Hunger, Bad Jews and Other Stories, and Little Men, and the editor of the anthology American Jewish Fiction: A Century of Stories. His fiction is known for its comic and often poignant portraits of secular, contemporary American Jews: restless, hapless strivers who feel cut off from the faith, hardships, and certainties of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Set largely in the Midwest, his stories take up family obligation, inherited memory, assimilation, and spiritual longing with a sharp ear for Jewish humor. Bad Jews and Other Stories (1999) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction and was adapted for the screen as King of the Corner (2004), which Shapiro co-wrote with the actor-director Peter Riegert.

Shapiro’s honors include the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for From Hunger, the Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction for Little Men (2004), a Nebraska Center for the Book Honor Award in Fiction, and Pushcart Prize recognition for his stories. Little Men gathers two novellas and several stories about a cast of unsettled, self-doubting men. A longtime professor of English and Cather Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he taught creative writing and Jewish American literature until his death in 2011.