Is Shalom Auslander taking the name of God in vain when imagining Him as a big chicken? Is Naomi Alderman’s story of a lesbian relationship in Hendon blasphemous? Brought up as an orthodox Jew in New York, Shalom Auslander has produced a collection of short stories, Beware of God, which is viciously funny and irreverent. Naomi Alderman’s novel, Disobedience, is about a young woman who has turned her back on her father – a respected ra...

Momik, an only child whose parents survived the Holocaust, grows up in the shadow of their history, determined to understand the nature of the Nazi “beast”.

George Steiner described its child’s-eye grappling with the taboo of the Holocaust as “one of the great feats in modern fiction”.

“[She] happens to write like an angel.” — Simon Schama Nicole Krauss mesmerised readers, critics and judges of literary prizes alike with The History of Love. Her third novel, Great House, a 2010 National Book Award nominee, looks set to do the same. Her writing isn’t just appreciated – it is loved. Her books are about memory in the face of loss, the nature of love and the strange and intimate connections fostered between people. But mostly, they are about writing, and its po...

Naomi Alderman, one of the most exciting writers of her generation, explores the inception of a religion in her latest novel. She unravels the story of Yehoshuah, a Jew who wanders Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons and healing the sick. One year after his death, four narrators – his mother, best friend, the High Priest and a rebel leader – offer their own versions of events “…and either something miraculous happened, or someone lied”.

“If David Foster Wallace had written Eat, Pray, Love it might have come close to approximating the adventures of Gideon Lewis-Kraus”, wrote Gary Shteyngart on his friend’s debut novel, A Sense of Direction. JBW brings the two writers together to discuss an incredible series of pilgrimages. Inspired by his rabbi father’s late coming out as a gay m...