Before My Life Began

Before My Life Began

A Novel

Jay Neugeboren

EDWARD LEWIS WALLANT AWARD

Set against the post-World War II backdrop of Brooklyn, New York, Jay Neugeboren’s critically acclaimed novel follows the journey of protagonist David Voloshin as he navigates the complex intersections of family history, identity, and survival.

As the final installment in Neugeboren's acclaimed sequence of interconnected Brooklyn-centric narratives, the book explores the deep psychological echoes of the past, generational legacy, and the hidden currents that shape a young man's entry into adulthood. Blending rich atmospheric detail of mid-century urban America with profound emotional depth, Before My Life Began stands as a powerful meditation on memory, heritage, and the search for self.

About the Author

Jay Neugeboren is the author of 22 books, including five prize-winning novels (The Stolen Jew, 1940, etc.), two prize-winning books of nonfiction (Imagining Robert, Transforming Madness), and four collections of award-winning stories. His stories and essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Black Clock, and Hadassah, and have been reprinted in more than 50 anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. A professor and writer-in-residence for many years at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Mr. Neugeboren has taught at other universities, including Stanford, Indiana, S.U.N.Y. at Old Westbury, and Freiburg (Germany). He now lives and writes in New York City, where he is on the faculty of the Writing Program of the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University.

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