Hephzibah Anderson, Michael Joseph and Anne Sebba, chaired by Gerald Jacobs discussed the highlights and lowlights in Jewish writing since JBW 2002.

Etgar Keret’s short stories are fast paced and precise, hilarious and off-the-wall, they are also dark, sometimes violent, and often intensely poignant. They are, in short, brilliant. He discussed his very special world with journalist Hephzibah Anderson.

Here, three highly distinctive writers explored dysfunctional families; mining relationships, love and betrayals, secrets and lies. When We Were Bad, Charlotte Mendelson’s novel, tells the story of a high profile woman rabbi’s family in total disarray. In Rutu Modan’s beautifully drawn graphic novel, Exit Wounds, the search for a man feared dead in a terrorist attack reveals someone neither his son nor his lover knew. Blake Morrison wrote two moving memoirs uncovering the liv...

Alessandro Piperno’s books have been described as post-Primo Levi literature. His novel,The Worst Intentions, is an irreverent description of 3 generations of a rich Jewish family from Turin.

With his Don Juan de la Mancha -a vivid portrait of the post-’68 generation -Robert Menasse, one of the leading voices in Austrian literature, is more entertaining and facetious than ever.

Both share the same ironic outlook on life, sex and families.

Compared to their neighbours in North, East and West London, the Jewish communities on the other side of the river tend to be less discussed. Countering that we have Gerald Jacobs, literary editor of the Jewish Chronicle, and Julia Neuberger, Britain’s second-ever female rabbi. Jacob’s latest novel Pomeranski takes us to 1950s Brixton and beyond, featuring gangsters, boxers, jazz and the rag trade. Baroness Neuberger was rabbi of the South London...