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Harper
June 2014
On Sale: June 3, 2014
336 pages
ISBN: 0062287877
EAN: 9780062287878
Kindle: B00FJ37CJ0
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction
A singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a failed journalist asked to do the unthinkable: Forge Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, New York. Yevgeny Gelman, grandfather of Slava Gelman, βdidnβt suffer in the exact wayβ he needs to have suffered to qualify for the restitution the German government has been paying out to Holocaust survivors. But suffer he hasβas a Jew in the war; as a second-class citizen in the USSR; as an immigrant to America. So? Isnβt his grandson a βwriterβ? High-minded Slava wants to put all this immigrant scraping behind him. Only the American Dream is not panning out for himβCentury, the legendary magazine where he works as a researcher, wants nothing greater from him. Slava wants to be a correct, blameless Americanβbut he wants to be a lionized writer even more. Slavaβs turn as the Forger of South Brooklyn teaches him that not every fact is the truth, and not every lie a falsehood. It takes more than law-abiding to become an American; it takes the same self-reinvention in which his people excel. Intoxicated and unmoored by his inventions, Slava risks exposure. Cornered, he commits an irrevocable act that finally grants him a sense of home in America, but not before collecting a price from his family. A Replacement Life is a dark, moving, and beautifully written novel about family, honor, and justice.
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