Foreskin's Lament - Hardcover

Auslander, Shalom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 033045353X ISBN 13: 9780330453530

Publisher: Picador, 2008

Synopsis

Foreskin's Lament reveals Auslander's youth in a strict, socially isolated Orthodox community, and recounts his rebellion and efforts to make a new life apart from it. Auslander remembers his youthful attempt to win the ‘blessing bee’ (the Orthodox version of a spelling bee), his exile to reform school in Israel after being caught shoplifting a cassette tape of West Side Story, and his twenty-five-mile hike to watch the New York Rangers play in Madison Square Garden without violating the Sabbath. Throughout, Auslander struggles to understand God and His complicated, often contradictory laws. But ultimately, he settles for a ceasefire with God, accepting the very slim remaining hope that his newborn son might live free of guilt, doubt, and struggle.

Auslander’s combination of unrelenting humour and anger – a voice that compares to those of David Sedaris and Dave Eggers – delivers a rich and fascinating self-portrait of a man grappling with his faith, family, and community.

Praise for Shalom Auslander

'There is a serious point to Auslander's fictional games. He wants us to be careful of taking any figure of authority too seriously; God is just the prime example . . . Its real heroes are literary: writers such as James Joyce and Samuel Beckett who use prose to get at something more mysterious and mystical than any religion - our love of and trust in language, to amuse and distract us from death' Times Literary Supplement

About this title

Review:

About the Author ~ Shalom Auslander
Shalom Auslander was raised as an Orthodox Jew in Spring Valley, New York. His writing has been published in the New Yorker and Esquire, among other magazines. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and son.

Exclusive Amazon.co.uk Interview with Shalom Auslander

What is Foreskin's Lament about?

I was raised in a small ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York; picture a madrasa somewhere in Taliban Town, change the head coverings to yarmulkes, switch the Korans for Old Testaments and that’s pretty much it. The book is about my life under the thumb of an abusive, belligerent God, and the long-term emotionally crippling effects the fundamentalism of my youth has had and continues to have upon me. But funny. I suppose it didn’t help that my father on Earth was as abusive as my Father in Heaven. Good times, good times.

What inspired you to write it?

Anger. Four years ago, my wife and I went to a doctor, and the doctor put gel on my wife’s belly, and then the doctor said, "It’s a boy." And instead of being excited – instead of picking out little footballs or infant-sized Valentino Rossi shirts – I spent the evening terrified: Should I circumcise him or not? What will God do if I don’t? Will He kill me? Will He kill my son? Will He kill my son first, just so I experience that agony, and then kill me? When will He kill my wife? And then that fear turned to anger, and I thought, "Maybe I should write this down. Maybe I should tell someone what this feels like." And so I did.

Who are your literary influences?

I have no idea – I know who I like, I know who inspires me (Kafka, Beckett, Celine, Voltaire), but whether they influence my writing or not is for someone else to decide.

If you could recommend just one "must-read book" to anyone, what would it be and why?

I would recommend anything by me. This is because I’m self-centered, and broke.

What top tips do you have for anyone looking to write their first book?

Don’t. The only ones worth writing are the ones that tell the deepest, darkest truths about life and humanity, and the only way you can discover that is discover the deepest, darkest truths about yourself. Totally not worth it. Buy a flatscreen TV and an Xbox, stop looking inward and float through life, plump, shallow and happy. It will all be over soon, and you’ll thank me when it is.

Reviews for Foreskin's Lament

We are not the only ones to love this book. Check out a selection of reviews below.

Unforgettable . . . [Auslander is] America's hottest, funniest, most controversial young Jewish memoirist . . . I challenge even the most disapproving of his parents' friends to read this blackly hilarious, groundbreaking memoir without wiping tears of both kinds from their eyes. The Times

Outrageously funny . . . Dazzling . . . Raw brilliance infused with classic Jewish irony . . . This is indeed a lament, but a lament with attitude. Sunday Telegraph

Hilarious and devastating . . . Few books really are laugh-out-loud funny. This one is. The comic timing is perfect and, as with all the best Jewish jokes, the pain behind the humour is apparent . . . Fascinating. Naomi Alderman, Sunday Times

Review:

'...read as a practical manual on how to turn out fanatical fundamentalists in the respectable suburbs of New Jersey.'
-- Observer

'A tragic-comic masterpiece ... almost unbearably funny.' -- Financial Times magazine

'Don't miss this fantastic book - you won't find anything angrier or funnier.' -- Sainsbury's Magazine

'For all the unhappiness he describes, this memoir is never self-pitying, maudlin or depressing...' -- Independent on Sunday

'Funny, angry account of the author's troubled Orthodox Jewish upbringing.'
-- Sunday Times

'I wish I'd written it myself...will doubtless be a book that people will read and remember.' -- The Guardian

'Juvenile, damaged or wicked fun?...blackly hilarious, groundbreaking memoir without wiping tears of both kinds from their eyes.' -- The Times

'Outrageously funny memoir.' -- The Sunday Telegraph

'Shalom Auslander's memoir of growing up rebellious in strictly Orthodox Monsey, New York, is also painfully poignant and hilariously noir.' -- The Jewish Chronicle

'This is one of the funniest, darkest, rudest accounts of man and God ever written.'
-- Sunday Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 033045353X
• ISBN 13: 9780330453530
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320