A novel by Allan Appel
October 1, 2008 • 6 x 9 • 335 pages • 978-1-56689-118-9
A timely, funny novel about attempts to convert Jews to Christianity in New York City.
Appel's hilarious novel follows three interfaith Jewish/Christian couples who unwittingly rent the ground floor of their brownstone to a charming Southern evangelist. Serving his own blend of Christian cuisine, he opens a restaurant in the space, hoping to convert the Jews of the Upper West Side. His scheme destroys the harmony of the building when one of his six landlords finds comfort in the preacher’s conversion-by-gastronomy methods. Appel’s mix of comedy and theology conjoin effortlessly in an entertaining, fast, and funny story which reevaluates our meanings of faith and marriage in twenty-first century America.
About the Author
Born in Chicago in 1946 and raised in Los Angeles, Allan Appel is a novelist, poet, and playwright whose books include Club Revelation, High Holiday Sutra, winner of a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and The Rabbi of Casino Boulevard, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. His writing has appeared in the National Jewish Monthly, the Progressive, and National Lampoon, and his plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, New Haven, and Provincetown. He has published a total of six novels, a biography, two collections of poetry, a book on botany, and A Portable Apocalypse, a handy anthology of erudite and humorous quotations about the end of the world.
Allan Appel holds degrees in writing and comparative literature from Columbia University and City University of New York, and he attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Most recently he has worked at the Jewish Museum and taught English at the Trinity School in NYC. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where in 2003 he was awarded a fellowship in fiction from the State of Connecticut Commission on the Arts.
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