Here are 100 books that The Last Jew fans have personally recommended if you like
The Last Jew.
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As a girl growing up in the 1960s, I loved books that were set in the past—Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn were among my favorites. But those books weren’t historical fiction because they were written back then. So discovering that I could set my own books in the past was a thrill. I love evoking the sights, sounds, and smells of the past. And I especially love describing what my characters wear. Vintage clothes are my passion and being able to incorporate that love into my work is an ongoing delight.
Set in 17th-century Spain, this one follows the lives of two very different women: one the daughter of a poor silk grower in love with a priest, and the other a pampered princess married to a king who just happens to be impotent.
Although the two barely connect, Harrison plays them off against each other; both are exploited and misused not only by the men around them but by the entire system that’s been stacked against them from the start.
Harrison’s writing is vivid, dense, and flat-out gorgeous; she skews dark but believe me, it’s worth the ride.
Written in gorgeous prose that has the sheen of silk, Kathryn Harrison's POISON vividly reminds us of the persistence of desire and the sorcery of dreams.
Francisca de Luarac, the daughter of a poor Spanish silk grower, is a dreamer of fabulous dreams. Marie Louise de Bourbon, the niece of Louis XIV, dances in slippers of fine Spanish silk in the French Court of the Sun King and imagines her own enchanted future. Born on the same day—in an age when superstition, repression, and the Inquisition reign—the lives of these two young women unfold in tandem, barely touching. Each hoards…
Didn’t Get Frazzled captures with distressing accuracy the gauntlet idealistic college grads must face to secure an MD and, against the odds, come out of it a better human being.
Medical student Seth Levine faces escalating stress and gallows humor as four years of medical school shatter all preconceived notions…
I was a stubborn teenager, and growing up, I vocally declared I would never set foot in Spain. The Spanish Empire was oppressive! It was full of religious fanatics! Yet… in college I took a course on Spain’s Golden Age, and for the first time I saw a different side of history, full of paradoxes and contradictions, Inquisitors and female mystics, bumbling priests and powerful nuns, decadence and poverty, emperors, tricksters, artists, pirates, scientists, and everything in between. Spain of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries was extraordinarily complex and far from one-dimensional. Now, years later, I have travelled to Spain over twenty times, lived in Pamplona, and I am a historian of early modern Spain at Penn State University.
No list of books about early modern Spain would be complete without something on the infamous Spanish Inquisition. Historians are well aware that Inquisition trials were complex, full of coercion and secrecy, but also sometimes appropriated by individuals for their own purposes. This is an extremely accessible introduction to the Spanish Inquisition, told through “autobiographies” of six prisoners, such as Islamic and Jewish converts, a prophet, and a transgender individual. The collection includes transcriptions of the actual trials, plus brief analyses that guide readers through religious, social, gender, and political themes.
On the first day of Francisco de San Antonio's trial before the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo in 1625, his interrogators asked him about his parentage. His real name, he stated, was Abram Ruben, and he had been born in Fez of Jewish parents. How then, Inquisitors wanted to know, had he become a Christian convert? Why had a Hebrew alphabet been found in his possession? And what was his business at the Court in Madrid? "He was asked," according to his dossier, "for the story of his life." His response, more than ten folios long, is one of the many…
I’m a writer in Toronto, Canada. My novel Call Me Stan is weird historical fiction. Probably not as weird as the books below, but still weird. Its initial inspiration was the stunning cognitive dissonance between composer Richard Wagner’s vile anti-Semitism and his fascination with the Buddha. If I’d stuck with just that idea, I might’ve ended up with a fairly conventional historical novel. But a second idea collided with it and gave it energy: the legend of the cursed immortal referred to as the Wandering Jew. That gave me a present-day narrator who could carry us through a vast sweep of history in a jarringly anachronistic way. Which was exactly weird enough for me.
Gary Barwin had to make this list. He’s a Prospero of historical weirdness. I was torn between this book and his more recent novel Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, which follows its titular character on a harrowing journey across Nazi-infested Europe to retrieve his shot-off-by-a-Dadaist testicles from a Swiss glacier. But Yiddish for Pirates wins the toss because it’s narrated by a parrot.
Aharon, a Yiddish-idiom-spouting 500-year-old ship’s parrot, traces the life of his Captain, Moishe, from a shtetl near Vilnius through Torquemada’s Inquisition and Columbus’ brutal conquest of the Caribbean to an eventual erratic career in piracy, with a couple of quests along the way. What makes Barwin’s work sing is the tragic humanity within the swirl of its jaw-dropping narrative ridiculousness.
Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and nominated for the Governor-General's Award for Literature, a hilarious, swashbuckling yet powerful tale of pirates, buried treasure and a search for the Fountain of Youth, told in the ribald, philosophical voice of a 500-year-old Jewish parrot.
Set in the years around 1492, Yiddish for Pirates recounts the compelling story of Moishe, a Bar Mitzvah boy who leaves home to join a ship's crew, where he meets Aaron, the polyglot parrot who becomes his near-constant companion. From a present-day Florida nursing home, this wisecracking yet poetic bird guides us through a world of pirate…
Didn’t Get Frazzled captures with distressing accuracy the gauntlet idealistic college grads must face to secure an MD and, against the odds, come out of it a better human being.
Medical student Seth Levine faces escalating stress and gallows humor as four years of medical school shatter all preconceived notions…
Hussein Fancy is a Professor of History at Yale University where he teaches medieval history with a particular focus on medieval Spain and North Africa. His research, writing, and teaching focus on the entwined histories of not only Jews, Christians, and Muslims but also Latin and Arabic in the Middle Ages. He has traveled and lived extensively in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Among the wonders of medieval Spain is the appearance of the first Hebrew secular poetry since Biblical times. In this masterful and unparalleled set of translations by Peter Cole, we witness the profound, pious, chauvinistic, and indeed, sensual traditions of secular poetry over centuries. A fusion of Arabic and Hebrew traditions, in and of themselves, these poems stand as a metaphor for the Jewish community itself as well as its dynamism and endurance under Muslim and then, Christian rule.
Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies an extraordinary sensuality and intense faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time. Peter Cole's translations reveal this remarkable poetic world to English readers in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom. The Dream of the Poem traces the arc of the entire period, presenting some four hundred poems by fifty-four poets, and including…
Victoria Twead is the New York Times bestselling author of Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools and the subsequent six books in the Old Fools series. After living in a remote mountain village in Spain for eleven years, and owning probably the most dangerous cockerel in Europe, Victoria and Joe retired to Australia. Another joyous life-chapter has begun.
Who hasn’t learnt useful stuff from one of the “For Dummies” books? Our command of the Spanish language was lamentable when we first moved to Spain and we had to learn super-fast. The step-by-step approach in this book made learning the language a little less daunting and the accompanying CD was great for hearing how words should be pronounced. Although not hugely enthusiastic about following the course, the Spanish girl’s husky voice held Joe’s attention...
Learn Latin American Spanish quickly and painlessly The job market for those who are bilingual is expanding rapidly. Businesses and government agencies are hiring translators; retailers and advertisers are concentrating more energy in targeting the Spanish-speaking; and hospitals and agencies are seeking to overcome language barriers. Whether you re a student studying Spanish, a traveler gearing up for a trip to a Spanish-speaking country and need to learn the basics, or a upwardly mobile looking to get ahead of the pack in your career by learning a second language, Spanish For Dummies, 2nd edition is your hands-on guide to quickly…
Now retired after a full life, I grew up with a passion for history and the people who made it, being very fortunate during over thirty years at sea to visit many locations around the world where the characters I read about lived. I am also fortunate now to write the history novels I like to read.
I enjoyed this from the very first page because it brought to me the nostalgia of a past era. It is so well constructed and a refreshing subject that brings the Madrid of 1868 to life.
Jaime Astarloa is the aging, old-school fencing master and survivor of duels who prides himself on loyalty and honor with an obsession to create the perfect sword thrust but is now aware of his physical decline.
When the cunning Adela de Otero appears as a worthwhile opponent who wants to learn from Jaime, he finds himself caught up in political intrigues where his old-time values have no substance. I found it hard to put it down.
Fencing is not a game but a science. The outcome is invariably the same: triumph or disaster, life or death...
It is 1868; Spain teeters on the brink of revolution. Jaime Astarloa is a master-fencer of the old school, priding himself on the precision, dignity and honour of his ancient art; his friends spend their days in cafes discussing plots at court, but Jaime's obsession is to perfect the irresistible sword thrust. Then Adela de Otero, violet-eyed and enigmatic, appears at his door. When Jaime takes her on as a pupil he finds himself embroiled in dark political intrigues against…
I am passionate about the written word and effective communication. My articles and reviews have been published in major newspapers and magazines and for two decades I taught writing on the university level. Travel writing is a subset of my experience as editor of the best-selling In Mind literary anthologies and editor and writer for more than a dozen guidebooks. In addition, I have been “first reader” and editor for prospective authors and shepherded several books to publication, the most recent Red Clay Suzie by first-time novelist Jeffrey Lofton (publication January 2023).
Like many World War I veterans, British Gerald Brenan left the army depressed and dispirited. He moved to Spain and settled in Andalusia, specifically the small village of Yegen. Like many ex-pats, he wanted a simpler life.
He had a small house and humble furnishings but brought his entire library—2000 books—from England. Although he was isolated, Brenan had many visitors, including Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and Hemingway. He died at 92 in Spain, of course. Brenan’s book is one of the first “ex-pat” Spanish memoirs and sets the standard for the genre.
I am an avid Hispanist and have for a long time been fascinated by the mix of cultures in medieval Spain. Soon after 9-11, I was forced to take part in a barefoot ritual of security checks on arriving at Zaragoza airport to see something of the Moorish heritage there, and it hit me how important the way we tell the story of ‘Moors and Christians’ is to our own times. My own experience as a linguist and of living abroad made me particularly interested in people who are able to see both sides of a story and transfer between cultures. This is what I researched further in my Ph.D. in relation to the demise of Muslim Granada.
This is a book that made me think again about the ‘Moorishness’ of Spain.
How to square the repression and ultimate expulsion of people of Muslim origin in the early sixteen hundreds with the obvious delight taken in aspects of their material culture such as architecture, fashion, and horsemanship, not to mention the sympathetic portrayal of Moorish characters in sixteenth-century Spanish literature?
It’s a well-argued book full of fascinating examples which examine and enlighten this paradox.
In the Western imagination, Spain often evokes the colorful culture of al-Andalus, the Iberian region once ruled by Muslims. Tourist brochures inviting visitors to sunny and romantic Andalusia, home of the ingenious gardens and intricate arabesques of Granada's Alhambra Palace, are not the first texts to trade on Spain's relationship to its Moorish past. Despite the fall of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 and the subsequent repression of Islam in Spain, Moorish civilization continued to influence both the reality and the perception of the Christian nation that emerged in place of al-Andalus.
As a child, I suffered very badly from asthma, and consequently, I missed a lot of schooling. When I left school at 15 I had no qualifications and could hardly read or write. I had a lot of catching up to do.
I was married at the age of 19 and in partnership with my wife Heather, we started the family business. After retiring, I now live in a small Andalusian villageI in the south of Spain. It was here where I began my writing career. At first it was just contributing to local magazines and newspapers, then I wrote my first book, Fiestas and Siestas Miles Apart.
This book is the equivalent of Google for Spain. Any expat, holidaymaker, or even if you're just passing through, you need this book. No matter where you are, or going to in Spain, this book will have everything you need to know, from opening times, fiesta dates, accommodation, even directions.
Lonely Planet's Spain is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Marvel at Modernista masterpieces in Barcelona, enjoy beachside Basque cuisine in San Sebastian, and taste sherry and flamenco in Andalucia - all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Spain and begin your journey now!
Inside Lonely Planet's Spain:
Colour maps and images throughout
Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests
Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds…
Jason Webster is the international best-selling author of fifteen books on Spain, including Duende, Sacred Sierra, The Spy with 29 Names, Violencia: A New History of Spain, and the Max Cámara series of crime novels. He is a publisher, broadcaster, award-winning photographer, a board member of The Scheherazade Foundation, and is married to the Flamenco dancer Salud.
The books in this list are all written by non-Spaniards, for obvious reasons. This one is almost an exception. Tomás Graves is the eighth son of the English poet and novelist Robert Graves. He has lived almost his entire life on the island of Mallorca, and is, effectively, as native as they come. Tuning Up at Dawn is a wonderfully lyrical account of his upbringing, his memories of his father, and his life as a musician. It is deliciously evocative of a slower world which has now all but disappeared.
A loving portrait of the other Majorca, and of a blissful life there revolving around the magic of music - a book to savour, perfect for escaping those crowded beaches.
Tomas Graves was born in and belongs to Majorca. His father, the great love poet Robert Graves, famously ended up on the beautiful Mediterranean island pretty much by accident, but it is the happiest accident of Tomas' life. His love for the special beauties of Majorcan culture shines on every page of this infectiously happy book. This is the real Majorca. 'Tuning Up at Dawn' examines both the suppression and…
