Description
About the Author
Allan Appel, born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles, is a prize-winning novelist 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 most recent novel, The Hebrew Tutor of Bel Air (Coffee House Press) 2010) is being optioned for television. The winner of two fellowships in fiction from the Connecticut State Office of Arts and Tourism, Appel lives in New Haven, where for the last decade he has been a staff writer for the online New Haven Independent.
Reviews
“An exciting read, with insights into rarely conjoined subjects and a rare— exceedingly rare- glimpse into an intriguing corner of the American mélange: Mormon and Jewish areas of collision, crisis and the prospect for cooperation.”—Monroe Price, Huffington Post
“I can’t think of many novels that, while not taking themselves too seriously, manage to be intelligent and sympathetic to not one but two oft-misunderstood American religions. That is, there may be books that get Judaism right, or books, though I doubt it, that get Mormons right, but to get them, both right? Quite a feat.” –Mark Oppenheimer, religion columnist for the New York Times 2010-2016 and author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture
“With wit and verve, Allan Appel has crafted a delightful comic novel. Best of all is its irresistible narrator-protagonist, uncertainly poised between belief and unbelief, family loyalty and rebelliousness. Underneath the clever plot twists is a genuine quest for wisdom and a warmth and tenderness rare in today’s fiction.”—Phillip Lopate, author of A Mother’s Tale, The Art of the Personal Essay, To Show and Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
“As fast-paced, audacious, and irreverent as a pickup basketball game played for human souls, The Book of Norman is a joyful romp through the minefield of American religious difference.”—Peter Manseau, American writer, religion scholar, and museum curator (Lilly Endowment of American Religious History at the National Museum, of American History, the Smithsonian and author of Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter, One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History, The Jefferson Bible, A Biography, among other books
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