Joshua Cohen
A Heaven of Others - $16
A Heaven of Others
with drawings by Michael Hafftka
When a ten year-old Jewish boy is exploded on a Jerusalem street by a ten
year-old Palestinian boy, he wakes up in a heaven no one in his tradition
prepared him for, a heaven of others. Cohen's novel stands at the crossroads
of a conflicted city and word-play that both celebrates and dismantles tradition.
#14 on The Believer short list reader survey of Best Books of 2008
"It is poignant and profound to refract one’s religious doubt this way through a religious mirror, brave to structure an epic novella around religious terrorism in which belief interrogates itself, through its own manifestations, which is something like God seeing himself in the passing surface he has created. Cohen engages his own religion in the terms of that religion, in its own language, which he recreates using myths—like wind-up Schulzian toys—cast in Semitic-syncretic mold, bursting with contradiction." from The New Haven Review
"A breathless flight of controlled delirium, an exquisitely blasphemous tour
of an afterlife where earth's dominion, in all its terror and glory, trumps
the miraculous and overturns the world to come... It's a brave book that should
earn its young author the reader's profound and enduring admiration."
Steve Stern, author of The Angel of Forgetfulness
"Joshua Cohen has created a visionary novel that is terrifying and heartbreaking
and humbling in its luminous brilliance. In my view, it firmly places the
author on the same level as Kafka." Michael Disend,
author of Stomping the Goyim
SEE ALSO:
Review
on Pop Matters
Review
in The Reading Experience
Interview,
"The Wrong Heaven: Critic Joshua Cohen on His New Novel," The
Jewish Daily Forward, Jan. 16, 2008
Review
in The Brooklyn Rail, February 2008
Cohen,
"On Writing A Heaven of Others," JBooks.com
Joshua Cohen is the author of three books, The Quorum,
Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto,
and Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed
(also with Michael Hafftka). He was born in Southern New Jersey in 1980.
Currently, he writes for The Forward and lives
in Brooklyn, NY.
www.joshuacohen.org
For three decades, Michael Hafftka's art has been widely exhibited, as well
as providing the subject of several critical monographs. His work is in
the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and several other
major museums. His work can be seen online at www.hafftka.com.
ISBN 0-9788811-4-1. ISBN-13 978-0-9788811-4-6.
Print run: 2,000 Price: $16.00
Official release: February 15, 2008
Contact: Ted Pelton, Starcherone Books, PO Box 303, Buffalo, NY 14201. Phone:
716-885-2726. Fax: 716-885-2726. ted@starcherone.com
Distribution through Small Press Distribution.
Book tour: New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Los Angeles, other venues TBA.