For the Relief of Unbearable Urges Nathan Englander A collection of comic-tragic short stories, most about the Jewish people.

This is a collection of nine different stories, all populated with incredibly vivid Jewish characters and dealing with uniquely Jewish topics. The moods and situations range from tragic to comic to bizarre--Englander is sort of a John Irving for Jews.

In The Twenty-seventh Man, we follow 27 poets in Stalinist Russia who are arrested and sentenced to be shot as they discuss poetry and literature from their jail cell.

The Tumblers tells the story of a group of Jewish villagers who are to be transported to a concentration camp, but somehow end up on a train full of entertainers and quickly scramble to pass themselves off as an acrobatic troupe.

In Reunion, while in a mentla hospital, Marty meets a man whom he discovers is his rabbi's estranged brother and arranges a surprise reunion between the two.

The Wig follows the employees of a small wig shop and their attempts to make the perfect wig for a rich client.

In The Gilgul of Park Avenue, a prominent New York banker suddenly discovers, during a cab ride home, that he is actually a Jew and seeks out a new age rabbi to aid him in discovering how to live his life as a Jew.

Reb Yitzhak is a rabbi, but Reb Kringle tells the story of how he goes into the city once a year to play Santa Claus, though he despises the act.

The Last One Way tells the story of a divorced woman and her efforts to fully separate from him by threatening to have him killed.

In For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, a man seeks a dispensation from a rabbi for visiting a prostitute as a way of rekindling a relationship with his wife.

In This Way We Are Wise is a story of one couple's life in modern Jerusalem and how they deal with the violence of bomb threats and terrorism.


These stories are all wonderful packages, simultaneously comic and tragic, and are written with incredible beauty.