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For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

by NathanEnglander (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2000

    $3.45

  • Used

    Paperback 2000

    $5.72

  • New

    Paperback 2000

    $21.18
Synopsis

Nathan Englander's first work of fiction, published when he was in his late twenties, landed him firmly in the company of Bellow, Malamud, Singer and Roth, with ten delightfully irreverent stories rooted in the weight of Jewish history and the customs of orthodox life. For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is bold, funny and irresistibly inventive, a brilliant tragi-comic vision delivered in a voice that is as humorous and full of life as it is sorrowful and haunted - a work of stunning authority and imagination. In 'The Twenty-Seventh Man' a clerical error brings earnest, unpublished Pinchas into the company of writers slated for execution at the order of Stalin; in 'The Tumblers' a group of Jews fated for Auschwitz improvise an escape by blending into a troop of acrobats and teaching themselves to tumble; in the title story, a married Hasidic man incensed by his wife's interminable menstrual cycle gets a dispensation from a rabbi to see a prostitute, 'for the reliefof unbearable urges'. Englander's stories are wise and compassionate, at once outrageous and wrenchingly sad.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 224
 Edition: Main
 Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 08 May 2000
ISBN 10: 0571201318
ISBN 13: 9780571201310
Book Overview: For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander is bold, funny and irresistibly inventive, a brilliant tragi-comic vision delivered in a voice that is as humorous and full of life as it is sorrowful and haunted.

Media Reviews
Englander's voice is distinctly his own--daring, funny and exuberant. --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Taut, edgy, sharply observed. . . . A revelation of the human condition. -- The New York Times Book Review
Remarkable art. . . .The author fills each of these pieces with vivid life, with characters that jump off the page. -- Newsday
Every so often there's a new voice that entirely revitalizes the story. . . . It's happening again with Nathan Englander, whose precise, funny, heartbreaking, well-controlled but never contrived stories open a window on a fascinating landscape we might never have known was there. It's the best story collection I've read in ages. --Ann Beattie
His characters are marvelously sympathetic creations. . . . What is most striking about the collection is not the subject matter but Englander's genius for telling a tale. . . . Invite[s] comparison to some of the best storytellers--Gogol, Singer, Kafka and even John Cheever. -- Time Out New York
Englander's voice is distinctly his own--daring, funny and exuberant. --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Taut, edgy, sharply observed. . . . A revelation of the human condition. -- The New York Times Book Review
Remarkable art. . . .The author fills each of these pieces with vivid life, with characters that jump off the page. -- Newsday
Every so often there's a new voice that entirely revitalizes the story. . . . It's happening again with Nathan Englander, whose precise, funny, heartbreaking, well-controlled but never contrived stories open a window on a fascinating landscape we might never have known was there. It's the best story collection I've read in ages. --Ann Beattie
His characters are marvelously sympathetic creations. . . . What is most striking about the collection is not the subject matter but Englander's genius for telling a tale. . . . Invite[s] comparison to some of the best storytellers--Gogol, Singer, Kafka and even John Cheever. -- Time Out New York
Author Bio
Nathan Englander was born in 1970. His first book, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, a collection of short stories, was published in May 1999 and became an international bestseller. It earned him a PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Nathan was selected as one of '20 Writers for the 21st Century' by The New Yorker, was awarded the Bard Fiction Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and numerous anthologies including The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize. His first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, was published in 2007.