The New School’s first Fiction Forum of the fall welcomed New York Times bestselling author Nathan Englander. The hall filled with students, faculty, writers, and community members. All were captivated by Mr. Englander, who is known for his novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, and his collection of stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. He read excerpts from his newest work, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, a novel that has a unique and ambitious multi-genre, multi-setting structure (it takes place in Berlin, Paris, and Jerusalem) and largely centers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The author calls it “a ‘turducken’ of a novel,” which I learned that night, is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken.
Englander has been cooking up this intricate story for decades; its subject is extremely personal to him. Having worked for the peace effort in Jerusalem, where he risked his life daily to fight for his cause, he told us—without pretension—that he was “ready to die for peace.” He comes across as an unapologetic realist, but passion nearly consumes him when he speaks of his work overseas. It was refreshing to see an artist who does not simply preach, but who speaks and writes from experience—he has certainly walked the walk.
The two excerpts Englander shared possessed striking originality. His work has the stunning imagery that channels the spiraling lyricism of prose poetry. Even secondary characters feel tangible, the world alive. When not reading, he spoke with alacrity. It is clear he is not someone who wastes time with idle conversation. In speaking, he does just what his work accomplishes: gets right to the heart of the issues, but not without wit or empathy.
Mr. Englander’s stories of his time in Jerusalem are dotted with unexpected humor and paradox. He told us how he and the other young activists would have communal dinners, everyone contributing a dish of fresh food from the local market. The day after one such party, terror struck—a bombing in the center of town. One of his friends who had been in attendance, a war photographer, went to the site to capture the gruesome scene. During the bombing, Englander and his photographer friend spoke on the phone about the party the night before and wondered whether people had a good time; Englander could hear explosions through the phone. Carrying on with normalcy was a necessity for survival.
Steve Stern of The New York Times described the book as “a guilty pleasure — guilty because you wonder throughout if a book highlighting the endless cycles of trespass and vengeance that define the modern state of Israel should be quite so much fun.” A few times when listening to the excerpts, I thought, “Wow, that’s really funny…but am I allowed to laugh at anything in a book about the war-torn Middle East?” Mr. Englander has a gift for finding humor in tragedy, which brings such depth and humanity to his works.
His advice to young writers? Don’t fret over finding the perfect agent or scoring a book deal, “just work every day…you have to make writing the place you go to make sense.” When asked about hope in these troubled times, both in America and in Israel, Englander said he refuses to give up on either country. He feels that hope is something we must “actively and consciously hold onto, something to embrace.”
—Madelyn Monaghan, Fiction Editor