The Ministry of Special Cases

The Ministry of Special Cases

by NathanEnglander (Author)

Synopsis

Kaddish Poznan chips the names off gravestones for a living, removing traces of disreputable ancestors for their more respectable kin. His wife Lillian works in insurance, earning money when people live longer than they fear. As Argentina's Dirty War unfolds around them, their sometimes hilarious misadventures are soon replaced by something much darker. A visit to the dreaded Ministry of Special Cases is only the start of Englander's stunning vision of a nation in the hold of corruption and torture, a place where absurdity, despair and hope are the end products of a bureaucracy run out of control.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Edition: Main
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 03 Jul 2008

ISBN 10: 0571235441
ISBN 13: 9780571235445
Book Overview: The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander is a dazzling story of hope and loss set during Argentina's Dirty War, from the bestselling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.

Media Reviews
Who is this Nathan Englander, so young in novelist years, but already possessed of an old masters voice?... One reads this novel in awe of Englander's talent. -- The New York Times Book Review A mesmerizing rumination on loss and memory. -- Los Angeles Times [A] tour-de-force.... A few pages into The Ministry of Special Cases , it becomes clear how much [Englander] has to bring to the topic: pitch-black humor, a skeptical affection for his characters, and the narrative ability to trace the impact of fascism-with-a-modern-face on a cluster of lives. -- The Seattle Times
Author Bio
Nathan Englander was born in New York in 1970. His short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and numerous anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize Stories. Englander's story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, earned him a PEN/Malamud Award among many other accolades. He lives in New York City.