First published 2012
Two married couples gather for an evening that turns dark when they begin playing a cruel game about Holocaust survival. The conversation spirals into territory that exposes the fault lines in both marriages. This collection of eight stories explores how history haunts contemporary life. Englander moves from Israeli settlements during the Yom Kippur War to elderly campers seeking vigilante justice at a summer retreat. A father tells his son a deceptively simple story about evil. Two mothers make a devastating choice to protect a child. The stories grapple with sexual desire, family secrets, and the weight of inherited trauma. Englander captures moments when ordinary people confront extraordinary moral choices, revealing how the past shapes present relationships in unexpected ways.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: moral-choices, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Israel, Yom Kippur War
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
207 pages · Hardcover · Knopf