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Beware of God
By Shalom Auslander

       Outrageously funny and ferociously intelligent, this collection of stories is centred around a series of surreal and profane conceptions of God. Each story is unmistakably Jewish as are the depictions of God, but in the vein of Philip Roth or even Mel Brooks rather than a more orthodox tradition. God appears in a variety of incarnations; as a chain-smoking mafia boss attempting to keep a hold of the death rate of the world; the voice on the car radio instructing Mr. Schwarzman to build an altar in his back garden. He’s also an overbearing CEO with a marketing strategy, though the jury is still out on whether the slogan ‘The Original and Still the Best’ works, or whether to appeal to a different market with ‘The Porsche of Deities’.

Each tale is more bold and inventive than the next,. Yet Auslander possesses the deft skill of making even the most surreal situations completely plausible, often moving and consistently hilarious –where else would we find an enlightened chimp suffering a bout of existential angst, Doughnut and Danish, the observant god-fearing hamsters, and I won’t even attempt to explain the spiritual rollercoaster boarded when ingesting a Friday night dinner...

There is nothing and no one too sacred for Auslander’s shrewd gaze. This emerges in the most unexpected intertextual references used. These include a myriad of prayers to Holocaust educational rhetoric, the golem tale, the Dead Sea Scrolls... even Charlie Brown and Snoopy are swept up into this uncanny world.

I loved this book –read it and it will make you laugh until it hurts...and in the long run, it’ll do you a lot more good than a bowl of chicken soup.

Shalom Auslander will be in discussion with Naomi Alderman, and Elena Lappin at Jewish Book Week on Tuesday 28th February at 6.15pm
Click here to view this session

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