Short Stories, Irish literature, Classics, Modern Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, The Japanese Novel, Post Colonial Asian Fiction, The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and quality Historical Novels are Among my Interests








Wednesday, October 31, 2018

October 2018 — The Reading Life Review


October Authors 








Row 1

  1. John Dos Passos - USA - Manhattan Transfer 

  1. Sholem Aleichem- Ukraine 

  1. Helen Mayles Shankman- USA - author of They Were Like Family to Me, a marvelous collection of stories set in Poland during WW Two

  1. Clarice Lispector - Brazil - her image is on my Sidebar 

  1. Bruno Schultz -Poland - Holocaust Short Stories, also great painter

  1. Bernard Malamud- USA - Pulitzer Prize Winner


Row 2

  1. Blume Lempel - Ukraine, immigrated to Canada

  1. Yenta Mash - Moldova, immigrated to Israeli, Yiddish Short Stories 

  1. TADEUSZ Borowsky - Poland - author This Way to,The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Short stories about Auschwitz 

  1. Chaim Grade and his wife Inna - born in and wrote about Vilna,Lithuania, immigrated to New York City

  1. Neil Perry Gordon - U.S.A - very good debut novel, The Cobbler’s Tale

  1. Esther Singer Kreitman - Poland, immigrated to England 



Row 3

  1. Janet H Swinney - UK - a very talented short story writer

  1. Jeremy Dauber - U.S.A - author of The Remarkable Life and After Life of Sholem Aleichem and Jewish Comedy

  1. Rikudah Potash - Poland, immigrated to Israel - Yiddish language writer of Short Stories on Yeminite Jews in Israel

  1. Chava Rosenfarb - Poland, immigrated to Canada - Multi genre Yiddish Language writer -  added her image to my side bar this month

  1. Ida Fink - Poland, Immigrated to Israel, very poigant Holocaust Short Stories 

  1. Isaiah Spiegel- Poland, immigrated to Israel, powerful short stories set in the Łódź Ghetto

Birth Countries

  1. Poland - 8
  2. U.S.A - 4
  3. Ukraine - 2
  4. Brazil - 1
  5. Molodova - 1
  6. Lithuania - 1
  7. UK - 1

Four authors are living, fourteen have passed on.

Nine women, nine men.  Not planned just happened

Eight made their first appearance on The Reading Life, ten are old friends.


Given The anti-immigrant hysteria being used by venal politicians all over the World, a few months ago i began tracking  authors who immigrated.  In October, ten authors left their birth country.  All were exemplary law abiding productive citizens though most arrived near destitute.

Blog Stat

There are 3428 posts online.

There has been 5,443,410 page views 

The most viewed post was on an Indonesia authored Short Story.  After that three stories are pre-WW Two works by authors from The Philippines.  Story five was from India.  

Top home countries:

U.S.A, Philippines, India, Ukraine, UK, Russia, France, and Indonesia

November Plans

We Will once again be happily participating in German Literature Month.  Out of respect for the great Yiddish literature tradition we Will not comingle posts on Yiddish authors with writers from a culture that tried to destroy all traces of Yiddish culture and murdered six million Yiddish readers, thus in November there Will be no posts on Yiddish Literature.

My great thanks to Max u for his kind Gift Amazon Gift Cards.

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1 comment:

Buried In Print said...

It seems fitting that, in October, the bulk of your reading is from writers who have passed on (as we've just passed the Day of the Dead). I continue to marvel at the diversity of your reading. What a thoughtful remark regarding this being German Literature Month: very respectful.