If you ask listeners what kinds of historical fiction audiobooks feature Jewish characters, many responses will mention World War II settings. Several of these recently published audiobooks are highlighted below, but Jewish historical stories span centuries and continents, from Biblical times to the late 20th century. Historical fiction audiobooks can serve as a wonderful vehicle to educate and inform, and these six powerful audiobooks allow listeners to experience past Jewish lives.
Set in East London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Allison Epstein’s enthralling reimagining of the pickpocket Fagin (from OLIVER TWIST), FAGIN THE THIEF, is given a mesmerizing performance by Will Watt. With dramatic phrasing and a hint of menace in his tone, he expertly captures the fraught atmosphere and the religious and class prejudices of that place and time, as well as the desperation and wiliness of Fagin and his band of accomplices. Listeners will learn of Fagin’s early life with his devoted seamstress mother in “their tiny enclave of the Stepney slum [which] is home to some four hundred Jews who have, to all intents and purposes, built their own country, half a mile square in which they need not be outsiders.” In Watt’s careful depiction, Fagin’s backstory comes to life, allowing listeners to appreciate his complex character, rather than Dickens’s harsh portrayal. While it is helpful to have read OLIVER TWIST, Epstein’s work stands on its own.
Listeners seeking a fully immersive audio experience should look no further than Chaim Grade’s extraordinary saga, SONS AND DAUGHTERS, and then sit back for a life-changing audio adventure. Originally published serially in 2 Yiddish newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s, this masterpiece has been translated by Rose Waldman with precision and clarity and given an Earphones Award-winning tour-de-force performance by Rob Shapiro. Set mainly in an early-1930s Polish-Jewish village, the story centers on the town’s Rabbi Sholem Katzenellenbogen’s disappointment in his 5 adult children—3 sons and 2 daughters—who defy his expectations by choosing their own less traditional paths. But it is really the story of Jewish community, and of a vibrant way of life which sadly would be obliterated only a few years later. Shapiro breathes life into every flawed and generous character, from the members of the Rabbi’s extended family to community members and citizens of nations where the Rabbi’s children emigrated. Switching effortlessly between English and Yiddish, Shapiro creates a landscape that will long live in the minds of listeners.
As noted, WWII is the setting for many novels featuring Jewish characters. One novel that can serve as an excellent introduction to the Holocaust for high school and older listeners is Pamela Reitman’s CHARLOTTE SALOMON PAINTS HER LIFE. While real-life accounts of attacks and confinements of Jews are interspersed throughout the story, the focus is on the fictional reimagining of the challenges faced by real-life German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon as she escapes Germany for Nice, France, hoping to continue her painting in safety. Sadly, Salomon was eventually deported to the Auschwitz death camp, where she died in her twenties. Dina Pearlman’s precise and emotionally urgent performance of Charlotte’s furious struggles to create art will appeal to a wide audience seeking to witness how passions and art were not completely obliterated during the Holocaust.
Also set in France is the stirring THE FRENCH WINEMAKER’S DAUGHTER by Loretta Ellsworth. Caroline Hewitt’s performance is simply perfection as she narrates this dual timeline audiobook. Sounding exactly like a 7-year-old French girl, Hewitt portrays Martine, who is hidden by her Jewish father in a cabinet with a valuable bottle of wine as Nazi officers arrive at their home. Left alone to fend for herself, Martine is rescued and brought to a Catholic abbey by Sister Ada, who pretends Martine is her niece to keep her safe. In the contemporary storyline, Hewitt conveys confidence and empathy as Charlotte, an American pilot living in Paris who is gifted a bottle of wine which turns out to have a false label. Inspired by the solace her grandfather found in his California vineyard after serving in WWII, Charlotte is determined to return the wine to its rightful owner. The lives of Charlotte and Martine ultimately converge in ways that are powerful and poignant.
Listeners will feel as though they are witnessing history as they follow the story of two young Jewish women endangered by recently enacted antisemitic laws and the presence of Nazi officers in WWII northern Italy in Georgia Hunter’s atmospheric and propulsive audiobook, ONE GOOD THING. Esti, who makes false identity cards for the Resistance, is portrayed by narrator Eva Feiler with a determined intonation. Her more cautious best friend Lili must summon her courage when Esti implores her to take Esti’s 3-year-old son to Allied-occupied southern Italy, where they hope to be safe. Often walking on foot and aided by compassionate clergy and kind-hearted citizens, Lili nonetheless finds herself in nearly constant peril. Feiler expertly depicts every harrowing step of this fraught escape. Feiler’s nuanced characterizations of a large cast as well as her evocative depiction of a war-torn nation illuminate the challenges of surviving in a country where Jews were ostracized and as much at risk as in the rest of Europe.
In Cynthia Weiner’s debut audiobook, A GORGEOUS EXCITEMENT, listeners are transported to the wealthy Upper East Side neighborhood of New York City in the 1980s. This neighborhood was the setting for the real-life “Preppy Murder” case, which serves as the backdrop for this story. During the summer before leaving for college, 18-year-old Nina Jacobs, who is Jewish, is spending time with her mostly WASP friends hanging out in bars. She is drawn to the seemingly perfect Gardner Reed, who seems comfortable in his identity and his world. Nina longs to feel more secure in her relationships with her bipolar mother and her neighborhood friends. Rebecca Lowman impressively differentiates a large cast of mostly young adults as she settles listeners into this story of a young Jewish woman’s search for identity amid misfortune and family trauma.
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Michelle J. Ritholz is an AudioFile reviewer
