Thursday, February 14, 2008


Exile's tale takes $100,000 Jewish book prize

Sarah Crown writing in The Guardian Wednesday February 13, 2008

An account of a family's loss of fortune and flight from 1940s Cairo to New York has won a coveted $100,000 prize for Jewish literature.


Lucette Lagnado's memoir, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World, is only the second ever recipient of the Sami Rohr Prize which, since its inception in 2006, has ranked among the world's richest literary awards. The annual prize was inaugurated by businessman Rohr's family on his 80th birthday in honour of his lifelong love of Jewish literature. Administered by the Jewish Book council, it aims to reward an emerging writer whose work "stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern". Fiction and non-fiction books are considered in alternate years; last year's prize went to Tamar Yellin for her debut novel, The Genizah at the House of Shepher, described by one reviewer as a "Jewish-style Da Vinci Code".

Announcing the award today, the Jewish Book council said that Lagnado's victory was
"based on her demonstration of a fresh vision and evidence of future
potential to further contribute to the Jewish literary community." The
panel of judges, who were anonymous until today's announcement, included the
historian and author of Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt, and the
journalist, author and Colombia University professor Ari Goldman.

Through her account of her own family's fortunes, Lagnado, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, sheds light on the neglected histories of the many thousands of Jews
forced out of Egypt in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. She centres her
memoir on the experience of her father, Leon, the suit-wearer of the title - a
highly successful businessman who, after he and his family were finally forced
to leave Cairo in 1963, struggled to adapt to life in America and remained
devoted to his home city until his death. Reviewing the book for the New York
Times, critic Michiko Kakutani described it as "stunning ... a story
about how exile indelibly shapes people's views of the world ... about the
mathematics of familial love and the wages of memory and time."

The award will be presented at a ceremony in Jerusalem in April.

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