SAY THE WORD ‘Fiddler’ in the film context to virtually anyone you meet, and they will know exactly what you mean. Fiddler on the Roof is like Van Gogh’s ear or Beethoven’s Fifth, in a broader cultural sphere. It’s also up there as the pinnacle of shlock culture […]
THE FIRST TIME you read this book, instinctively, you know you must be very careful. To cite Julian Schnabel’s film Basquiat: you might be looking at Van Gogh’s ear. This is the kind of metaphor that Lynn Joffe’s debut novel, The Gospel According to Wanda B. Lazarus presents. […]
SHOLEM ALEICHEM COULD do this. As could Isaac Bashevis Singer. And in the vein of great Yiddish tales told through a humble cipher, this week, you will get to hear, in Afrikaans, the work of Hendie Grobbelaar which reflects a base yet deep and rich understanding of local […]
WHO CAN EVER pooh-pooh the pathos and tragedy of Tevye the dairyman? Living in a small shtetl in an Eastern European place called Anatevka, which is threatened by rising anti-Semitism, this character, penned by the inimitable Sholem Aleichem from 1894 is the profoundly religious father of five feisty […]
MAKING THEM LAUGH at cultural idiosyncrasies of your own is a complex challenge that draws together bias, cringeworthiness and caricatures in a way that can never be precious. Ask Sonia Esguiera, who for the past eight years or so has been developing the Porralicious brand. This, its fourth […]
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