THE GENIZAH: A NOVEL
“Heartbreaking, powerful, poetic, and innovative, this novel deserves its place on every bookshelf.”
— Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, international bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
“Gorgeously written and one of the most powerful, poetic books I have read, I am in awe of this novel.”
— Jennifer Rosner, author of Once We Were Home and The Yellow Bird Sings.
…Definition: Genizah is a storage area in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery designated for the temporary storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics prior to proper cemetery burial.
In the novel The Genizah, Wayne Karlin enters its pages as a character in his own novel, reimagining his family’s lives—and fate—if they had not come to America but stayed in his mother’s village in Poland where the rest of her extended family were murdered by the Nazis in 1941.
Karlin commemorates and mourns that unutterable loss by making it present, in the spirit of the words from the Passover Seder, which asks those at the table to recount the story of oppression as if they had lived it.
It is a phrase that calls upon the people at the table to feel, not just to know, what happened, as good fiction calls us to do. How can anyone who had not been through the Holocaust share even a little part of such experiences? How can anyone who has not felt some of that horror reverberate in their own bones try to understand the terrible massacres of our own days, sparked by hatred of the Other, in Syria, in Myanmar, in Israel, in Gaza, in Charleston, and in Pittsburgh—in so many other places, they overwhelm our ability to empathize.
Karlin’s answer to that question is to personalize the impersonal, to imagine what could have happened if his grandparents, and mother, and her brothers and sisters and his father and his family, had not torn themselves away from a place they and their ancestors had lived for hundreds of years, in a town and on a continent where they had always been unwelcome guests.
Read Excerpts: HERE
Pub Date: September 17th, 2024
$18.95 trade paperback; ISBN: 979-8-9866178-2-4
$9.99 ebook; ISBN: 979-8-9866178-3-1
Distributors: Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Overdrive
The Genizah reconfirms that Wayne Karlin is one of my favorite novelists ever. The way he uses language to open the door to the hidden darkness of the past and shed light for our way forward is admirable. Heart-breaking, powerful, poetic and innovative, this novel deserves its place on every bookshelf.
--Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, internationally best-selling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child '
The Genizah is a stunner of a novel, a brilliant re-imagining of the author's own family history. In asking, what if my parents had not left Kolno?, Karlin conjures an alternative course, shining shimmering light on loves and losses and commemorating those who did not escape the Holocaust, many within his extended family. Gorgeously written and one of the most powerful, poetic books I have read, I am in awe of this novel.
--Jennifer Rosner, author of Once We Were Home and The Yellow Bird Sings.
"Wayne Karlin's The Genizah transfigures two of literature's most venerable elements: imagination and empathy. It is a brave, beautiful, heart-deep, heartbreaking and ultimately overpowering book-- necessary, and, in this strange, awful historical moment, timely."
~Richard Bausch, author of Payhouse, Editor pf the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction
Wayne Karlin's THE GENIZAH is a work of profound empathic imagination. What might have been the fate of his parents if they had not been able to escape from the Polish town of Kolno, where most of their family were murdered by the Nazis? This brave, eloquent and redemptive novel sears and heals, all at once.
--Joyce Kornblatt, author of Mother Tongue
The Genizah is a thoughtful imagining of what would have happened to the author’s mother’s family if they had not fled Poland for America when they did in order to escape the Nazis. This is a detailed, vividly written exploration of this “What If” scenario, a poignant and harrowing sequel to Karlin’s previous, non-fiction book documenting the history of his extended family, all murdered in the Holocaust. This elegiac novel pays heartfelt tribute not only to Karlin’s own family but to all Holocaust victims so their stories will not be forgotten.
· Dr. Nora Gold, author of In Sickness and In Health/Yom Kippur in a Gym and 18: Jewish Stories Translated From 18 Languages, and Editor of Jewish Fiction .net
An unexpected discovery in the present leads to a flashback and retelling of a Jewish‑American family history in Poland brought to life by vivid, increasingly brutal experiences, but also with moments of joie de vivre, characters and descriptions as layered and complex as modern life itself. Karlin's fiction always has magical qualities of visual illusiveness, uncanny insights, and revelations that emerge unexpectedly, yet it’s not mere artifice that carries his complex imagery, it’s profoundly felt emotion and the sure hand of a master craftsman."
— George Evans, award-winning poet, recipient of numerous fellowships, and author of several collections, including The New World, and Sudden Dreams.
In one sense, this is the story of Jewish torment through the ages; but, even more, it is the story of particular persons in whose lives we can see something of our own. In the end, we come to realize that only one distinction should matter: whether we participate in the murder or persecution of vulnerable others, seek to protect them, or stand by while it happens.
— Michael Kinnamon, former General Secretary for the National Council of the Churches of Christ USA and author of A Rooftop in Jerusalem and Summer of Love and Evil, plus others
I“The Genizah is Wayne Karlin’s fiction at its best. A friend once said: say it clearly and make it beautiful. Wayne Karlin has done this in a book that will be called his masterwork.” — Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate, Playwright
Kirkus review of The Genizah https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/wayne-karlin/the-genizah/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFBSbBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRqPOQ-ZjT1CyrkzHO_Zwbah30y2J6h2RpxaZ8Q5Rg2QhntheloMq2-z-g_aem_bePBN4-s8BgiS_RwbX3aWw
Video review from TJ Martin: Indie Press Spotlight Series: