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Dear Book Lovers,
From everyone at Melbourne Jewish Book Week, we hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe. Our thoughts go out to all those whose livelihoods are at risk during these uncertain times. Passover and Easter holidays this year will be different for everyone. We hope that we can offer some comfort and literary relief with our enews. 

MJBW was thrilled to receive some much needed good news recently. Congratulations to Maria Tumarkin who became one of eight international writers to be awarded the Windham Campbell Literature Prize by Yale University. The aim of the Windham Campbell prize is to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. 'The need is great; the average Australian author’s income is a mere $12,900, and literature receives the least government funding of all art forms in Australia, despite an overwhelming 95% of us reading books for pleasure or interest.’ (Guardian Australia).

MJBW would like to acknowledge and support the role of independent bookshops in Melbourne as they strive to supply their respective communities with books which we believe should be classified as ‘essential’ for our well being. Readings and The Avenue Bookshop are currently delivering books ordered online via email or their websites, or by telephone. For the hours of self-isolation which, for many of us, means separation from members of our family, we have selected the following titles by Australian authors who were due to appear at MJBW 2020 which was scheduled for 2-7 May.

READING RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommended by Bram Presser


The Watermill

by Arnold Zable

Every new book from Zable is a work of beauty, and The Watermill might just be his most beautiful yet. Through four stories, each with a different backdrop of war and genocide, Arnold Zable examines what it means to survive and how art, music, writing and human connection help us rise above our traumatic experience. It’s a book of immense depth and wonder, absolutely essential for our troubled times. 

Spinoza's Overcoat:
Travels with writers and poets

by Subhash Jaireth

A collection of meditations full of astonishing details 'Encompassing matters of translation, love, mortality and homage, this is a rare model of what might be called - literary philosophy’. . .Gail Jones, author of The Death of Noah Glass. Perfect reading for the moment. From ‘ Ottla, Kafka’s Favourite Sister’ to ‘Lorca’s Sleep of Apples’ plus many more in between.. Take the time to read a writer or poet a day that is familiar, and be enthralled to discover the ones that are not.

The Deceptions

by Suzanne Leal

 

Moving from wartime Europe to modern day Australia, The Deceptions is a powerful and confronting novel of old transgressions, unexpected revelations and the legacy of lives built on lies and deceit. Inspired by a true story of wartime betrayal, The Deceptions is a searing, compassionate tale of love and duplicity-and family secrets better left buried.

Recommended by Tali Lavi
 

The Secret Home

by Andy Mia Kranz

This labour of love is one of those picture books that ascends into the realm of a beautiful work of art. But further than this, Andy Mia Kranz’s book is one with a moral imperative; it tells the story of how her father Henryk, known by people in the Melbourne community as Dr Henry Kranz, was hidden as a child during the Shoah. The full-page paintings, at points awash with cerulean blue, are quietly glorious; they contain a sense of the numinous. The Secret Home is poetically told, inferring the horror – ‘In the hiding place the years followed one another, Henryk turned four/ then five/ then six’ – but mostly it is about radical kindness and survival. It feels particularly apt to be reading it during these precarious times.

A sacred object for humans of all ages: thesecrethome.org

A Poem to be Shared with Children in the time of COVID-19


For all ages, a beautifully written poem by the 2020-2021 Australian Children’s Laureate Ursula Dubosarsky and illustrated by Andrew Joyner.

Ursula appeared for the Gandel Philanthropy Schools Program in 2018 MJBW.

(Click the image to view the poem in higher resolution.)

Happy reading everyone!


If you wish to contact us, please email
info@melbournejewishbookweek.com.au

Melbourne Jewish Book Week takes place on the land of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present and future.
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