Author Dr Daniel Goldhagen. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

LEADING author and expert on subjects of Jewish interest, Dr Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, will spearhead this year’s United Israel Appeal (UIA) campaign.

The writer is best known for his international bestseller, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, which was published in 15 languages.

UIA NSW president Bruce Fink said Dr Goldhagen is uniquely positioned “to speak truthfully and forcefully about the perils Israel faces, their sources, and the necessary responses”.

“The Sydney Jewish community is fortunate that Dr Goldhagen has accepted our invitation to visit Australia, where we will be privileged to hear firsthand from an extraordinary human being and a great Jewish thinker,” Fink said.

Recently appointed campaign chairman Danny Taibel added: “Dr Goldhagen’s work educates the world on the atrocities that Jews have faced and is a heartfelt reminder that we will never again be subjected to the horrific persecution and suffering thrust upon us in the past.”
Read the full story

Author Vivienne Ulman

CHANTAL ABITBOL

FOR writer Vivienne Ulman, there’s one haunting vision of her mother in the throes of dementia that brought it all home for her.

It was an October day in a Melbourne nursing home. Her mother, Lucy, had abandoned ordinary food utensils and was eating with her hands, picking up bits of food in her fingers and lifting them to her mouth.

If something didn’t agree with her, she’d flick it onto the floor. Ulman’s father, Saul, sat opposite her, lovingly cutting up her food into small pieces and watching over her.

“It was so disturbing to me,” recalls Ulman, 61, who captured the scene in the first chapter of her book, Alzheimer’s: A Love Story, which chronicles her mother’s journey battling the disease. The book will be launched in Melbourne next month.

“Once I started with the chapter, then I knew I had to go back to the beginning and it all went from there.”
Read the full story

Larry Rosenzweig’s new book in the Alex McKenzie series.

DALIA SABLE

FOR many years, ginger-haired farm boy Alex McKenzie and his escapades lived exclusively in the stories a father told his three young children. As the kids grew, so too did Alex’s adventures and the friends who accompanied him on these journeys.

While story-telling dad Larry Rosenzweig always had the intention of “eventually” writing the stories down, it was not until he became unwell that the day came.

“About 18 months ago, I fell gravely ill. My digestive system stopped working and I was restricted to eating nothing other than bland, liquidised baby food,” Rosenzweig told The AJN.

As his weight dropped by more than 25 kilograms, Rosenzweig, psychologist-cum-recruiter, began suffering from severe headaches and constant muscle pain.

“My condition left me feeling angry, grumpy, and terrified for my future. I could not believe that this was happening to me -– the previously fit, healthy, bulletproof, me,” he said.

While his health has now improved, the experience led to a change in mindset and it led to Alex McKenzie embarking on his biggest adventure yet.

“The word ‘eventually’ was banned from my vocabulary. It was time to start pursuing my dream of being an author of children’s books immediately,” Rosenzweig said.
Read the full story

Author Jacob Rosenberg. Photo: AJN file

ADAM KAMIEN

ALMOST a year after his death at age 86, author Jacob Rosenberg’s final book, The Hollow Tree, was launched in Melbourne at the weekend.

Publisher Allen & Unwin described Mr Rosenberg’s final book, published posthumously, as “a parable of war and the unthinkable atrocities that humanity perpetrates in a time of cataclysmic social change”.

“The Hollow Tree is also a poignant story of love, war, and human resilience.”

Best known for his award-winning autobiographical book East of Time, Mr Rosenberg published several books of poetry in English -– his second language -– and another memoir, Sunrise West.
Read the full story

Author Tobsha Learner. Photo: Ingrid Shakenovsky

LEXI LANDSMAN

THE Antikythera mechanism is the oldest known, complex, scientific calculator. The first-century ancient bronze device was discovered in 1901 and was so scientifically advanced that a remotely similar device only appeared 2000 years after its creation. Its true purpose still remains a mystery.

It’s no surprise then that this mysterious mechanism captured the imagination of UK-born author Tobsha Learner and inspired her most recent novel, Sphinx.

Learner, who was a sculptor before she turned to writing, has carved her name in the literary world by exploring the mythical and supernatural in her novels.

The thriller, set in Alexandria, Egypt, is based around the ancient device, which Learner has fictionalised and added mysterious and dangerous powers to.
Read the full story

Author Judy Langton … first solo book of poems. Photo: Ingrid Shakenovsky

LEXI LANDSMAN

IN the seeds of war, the death of the heart. These are closing words in Judy Langton’s poem Lost Years.

The poem is a moving meditation on her life during the Holocaust as a three-year-old child -– from being sent into hiding, reunited with her mother, and losing her father.

Langton says that she has no vivid memory of the war years, except of the perpetual chaos and fear.

“I think a part of me died,” Langton, 68, laments. “I lost my father. It was incredibly difficult.”

Lost Years is one of the 47 poems that comprise her first book of poems, Forgotten Eyes, which will be launched at Gleebooks on September 13 by Australian poet Peter Skrzynecki.

The poems traverse her personal experience of love and loss, the psychological scars of war on her family, her mother’s suicide, and her love of travel and coming home.
Read the full story

Jewish author Ethan Canin

LEAH KAMINSKY

THE morning of September 11, 2001 was a turning point in the life of author Ethan Canin. As professor of English at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop (IWW), and author of six books, he stopped writing fiction for two years after the traumatic event.

“On that day I became serious about the world,” he says. “I found myself more urgently involved with history, politics and the nature of power.”

It was only last year that Canin returned to fiction-writing and published America, America. The novel tells the story of a plumber’s son, Corey Sifter, who becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of a powerful family.

After the family generously sends him to a private boarding school, Sifter becomes an aide to New York Senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for US president. Sifter then finds himself entangled in a world of politics, sex and morality.
Read the full story