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Official Sweepstakes Rules & Regulations
SCHOCKEN KAFKA POSTER SWEEPSTAKES
Sponsored by Schocken Books
A division of Random House, Inc. (“Random House”)

I. HOW TO ENTER
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. The sweepstakes begins April 17, 2012, and final submissions are due by 12:01 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) on April 25, 2012.

II. ELIGIBILITY
Sweepstakes is open to legal residents of the United States who are at least 18 years of age on at the start of the giveaway, excluding all Random House and employees and affiliates. Entries received from persons residing in geographic areas in which entry is not permitted will be disqualified. All federal, state and local laws and regulations apply. Void wherever prohibited or restricted by law.

III. PRIZES
One (1) winner will receive one (1) poster of the book jacket of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, signed by designer Peter Mendelsund. Approximate retail value of prize is $00.01. THE WINNER will be randomly selected.

IV. WINNER
All winners will be notified on or around the close of the sweepstakes. The winners will be notified by email and may be required to sign and return affidavit(s) of eligibility and release of liability within 10 days of notification. A noncompliance within that time period or the return of any notification as undeliverable will result in disqualification and the selection of an alternate winner. One prize per household. In the event of any other noncompliance with rules and conditions, prizes may be awarded to an alternate winner. Taxes, if any, are the winner’s sole responsibility. RANDOM HOUSE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO SUBSTITUTE PRIZES OF EQUAL OR GREATER VALUE IF PRIZES, AS STATED ABOVE, BECOME UNAVAILABLE.

V. ADDITIONAL PROVISIONS
Random House assumes no responsibility for any error; omission; interruption; deletion; defect; delay in operation or transmission; communications-line failure; or the theft destruction, unauthorized access to or alteration of entries. Random House is not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines; computer online systems, servers, or providers; computer equipment or software; or failure of e-mail or entry on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any Web site or combination thereof, including injury or damage to the participant’s or to any person’s computer related to or resulting from participating or downloading materials from this Web site or sweepstakes. By entering the sweepstakes, participants are consenting to subscribe to Schocken’s monthly e-newsletter. Additionally, participants are consenting to the use of their name for publicity and promotional purposes on behalf of Random House with no additional compensation or further permission (except where prohibited by law).

VI: WINNERS LIST
For the names of the winners, available after the close of the sweepstakes, please send a stamped, self addressed envelope to: Schocken Kafka Sweepstakes, 1745 Broadway, Mail Drop 13-1, New York, NY 10019.

VII: GOVERNING LAW
All disputes and questions regarding the construction, validity, interpretation and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of any participant or the Sponsor, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York, without giving effect to any choice of law or conflict of law rules or provisions that would cause the application of the laws of any jurisdiction other than New York. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of these Official Rules shall not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision. If any such provision is determined to be invalid or otherwise unenforceable, these Official Rules shall be construed in accordance with their terms as if the invalid or unenforceable provision was not contained therein.

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A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land,” where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.

View an excerpt from Unterzakhn:

(click on the thumbnails to view the full-size image)

See Leela on tour!

See our Yiddish flashcards and Pinterest board full of early 19th century fashions!

Buy the eBook: iPad | Nook

Unterzakhn, a stunning new graphic novel by Leela Corman, is out now in both hardcover format and a fixed-page eBook edition!

For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land,” where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.

Brush up on your Yiddish with these handy flashcards:

Next, visit our Pinterest board for a look at the fashion and architecture of early 20th century New York City:

Buy the eBook: iPad | Nook

A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land,” where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.

Become a fan of Leela on Facebook!

Praise for Unterzakhn:

“Historically informed and aesthetically compelling . . . Heavily inked cartoons beautifully depict period details and the Hester Street gossips as times evolve, and show how the two sisters’ similarities change into stark differences in appearance as they age. The text, salted with Yiddish, and the eloquently detailed images meld together to make this a good choice for readers who enjoyed Eleanor Widmer’s Up from Orchard Street or Hubert and Kerascoet’s Miss Don’t Touch Me.”
—Booklist

“Set in New York’s Lower East Side in the early twentieth century, Unterzakhn follows the lives of two sisters, Fanya and Esther . . . Corman gracefully traces both young women’s efforts to maintain control of their bodies in an unpredictable and at times violent world. She steeps her striking black-and-white artwork with period details, particularly in the clothes and the bustling street scenes. In a flashback scene set in Russia, especially, she echoes the swirling evocative style of Russian folk art . . . The story of Fanya and Esther’s struggles is beautifully drawn and hard to forget.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Lures you in with wittiness and sensuality . . . then bites you in the tuchus! Unterzakhn swirls with the energy of Almodóvar and the depth of Dostoyevsky as it follows the fates of two charmingly complicated twin sisters. I loved it.”
—Craig Thompson, author of Habibi

Want to win a set of Kafka’s masterworks with eye-catching new jackets by Peter Mendelsund? All you have to do is become a fan of Schocken on Facebook! Details below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Official Sweepstakes Rules & Regulations
SCHOCKEN KAFKA SWEEPSTAKES
Sponsored by Schocken Books
A division of Random House, Inc. (“Random House”)

I. HOW TO ENTER
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. The sweepstakes begins March 14, 2012, and final submissions are due by 12:01 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) on April 4, 2012.

II. ELIGIBILITY
Sweepstakes is open to legal residents of the United States who are at least 18 years of age on March 14, 2012, excluding all Random House and employees and affiliates. Entries received from persons residing in geographic areas in which entry is not permitted will be disqualified. All federal, state and local laws and regulations apply. Void wherever prohibited or restricted by law.

III. PRIZES
Two (2) winners will receive one (1) copy each of The Trial, Complete Stories, Amerika, The Castle, The Metamorphosis, Diaries, and The Sons by Franz Kafka. Approximate retail value of prize is $102.00. THE WINNERS will be randomly selected.

IV. WINNER
All winners will be notified on or around April 4, 2012. The winners will be notified by email and may be required to sign and return affidavit(s) of eligibility and release of liability within 10 days of notification. A noncompliance within that time period or the return of any notification as undeliverable will result in disqualification and the selection of an alternate winner. One prize per household. In the event of any other noncompliance with rules and conditions, prizes may be awarded to an alternate winner. Taxes, if any, are the winner’s sole responsibility. RANDOM HOUSE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO SUBSTITUTE PRIZES OF EQUAL OR GREATER VALUE IF PRIZES, AS STATED ABOVE, BECOME UNAVAILABLE.

V. ADDITIONAL PROVISIONS
Random House assumes no responsibility for any error; omission; interruption; deletion; defect; delay in operation or transmission; communications-line failure; or the theft destruction, unauthorized access to or alteration of entries. Random House is not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines; computer online systems, servers, or providers; computer equipment or software; or failure of e-mail or entry on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any Web site or combination thereof, including injury or damage to the participant’s or to any person’s computer related to or resulting from participating or downloading materials from this Web site or sweepstakes. By entering the sweepstakes, participants are consenting to subscribe to Schocken’s monthly e-newsletter. Additionally, participants are consenting to the use of their name for publicity and promotional purposes on behalf of Random House with no additional compensation or further permission (except where prohibited by law).

VI: WINNERS LIST
For the names of the winners, available after April 4, 2012, please send a stamped, self addressed envelope to: Schocken Kafka Sweepstakes, 1745 Broadway, Mail Drop 13-1, New York, NY 10019.

VII: GOVERNING LAW
All disputes and questions regarding the construction, validity, interpretation and enforceability of these Official Rules, or the rights and obligations of any participant or the Sponsor, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York, without giving effect to any choice of law or conflict of law rules or provisions that would cause the application of the laws of any jurisdiction other than New York. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of these Official Rules shall not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision. If any such provision is determined to be invalid or otherwise unenforceable, these Official Rules shall be construed in accordance with their terms as if the invalid or unenforceable provision was not contained therein.

On December 17, 1862, just weeks before Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, General Grant issued what remains the most notorious anti-Jewish order by a government official in American history. His attempt to eliminate black marketeers by targeting for expulsion all Jews “as a class” unleashed a firestorm of controversy that made newspaper headlines and terrified and enraged the approximately 150,000 Jews then living in the United States, who feared the importation of European antisemitism onto American soil.

Although the order was quickly rescinded by a horrified Abraham Lincoln, the scandal came back to haunt Grant when he ran for president in 1868. Never before had Jews become an issue in a presidential contest, and never before had they been confronted so publicly with the question of how to balance their “American” and “Jewish” interests. Award-winning historian Jonathan D. Sarna gives us the first complete account of this little-known episode—including Grant’s subsequent apology, his groundbreaking appointment of Jews to prominent positions in his administration, and his unprecedented visit to the land of Israel. Sarna sheds new light on one of our most enigmatic presidents, on the Jews of his day, and on the ongoing debate between group loyalty and national loyalty that continues to roil American political and social discourse.

Read an excerpt now!

The PBS documentary Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray, which features Jonathan Sarna, explores the hidden stories of American Jews during the Civil War. Presented by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation, it is available for purchase on DVD at www.shapell.org.

Praise for the book:

“Thoroughly researched and crisply written, this is a very fine work that will interest students of both American and modern Jewish history.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Sarna expertly navigates the repercussions of Grant’s shocking order, which galvanized the American Jewish community into action, reminding many who were refugees from European expulsions how insecure they were even in America. . . . Sarna weighs the short-lived order against important Jewish appointments in Grant’s administration, his humanitarian support for oppressed Jews around the world, and lasting friendships with Jews. A well-argued exoneration of a president and a sturdy scholarly study.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“In this compelling and focused study, Jonathan D. Sarna explores the causes—and assesses the little-known impact—of one of the most troubling incidents in the life of the Union’s greatest commander.”
—Geoffrey C. Ward, coauthor of The Civil War

“An absorbing account of a lamentable act by the North’s greatest general, a dishonorable act committed by an honorable man. This fair and balanced treatment of the event places the commander and the Jews in the context of great conflict. Fortunately, redemption and rapprochement would follow.”
—Frank J. Williams, president, Ulysses S. Grant Association

MetaMaus by Art Spiegelman

In the pages of MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago.

He probes the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process.

MetaMaus includes a bonus DVD-R that provides a digitized reference copy of The Complete Maus linked to a deep archive of audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a wealth of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches.

Compelling and intimate, MetaMaus is poised to become a classic in its own right.

Ben-Gurion: A Political Life by Shimon Peres and David Landau

Israel’s current president gives us a dramatic and revelatory biography of Israel’s founding father and first prime minister.

Shimon Peres was in his early twenties when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the “Old Man,” as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions—a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival. Ben-Gurion supported the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, though it meant surrendering a two-thousand-year-old dream of Jewish settlement in the entire land of Israel. He granted the Orthodox their first exemptions from military service despite his own deep secular commitments, and he reached out to Germany in the aftermath of the Holocaust, knowing that Israel would need as many strong alliances as possible within the European community.

A protégé of Ben-Gurion and himself a legendary figure on the international political stage, Shimon Peres brings to his account of Ben-Gurion’s life and towering achievements the profound insight of a statesman who shares Ben-Gurion’s dream of a modern, democratic Jewish nation-state that lives in peace and security alongside its Arab neighbors. In Ben-Gurion, Peres sees a neglected model of leadership that Israel and the world desperately need in the twenty-first century.

My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner by Meir Shalev

From the author of the acclaimed novel A Pigeon and a Boy comes a charming tale of family ties, over-the-top housekeeping, and the sport of storytelling in Nahalal, the village of Meir Shalev’s birth. Here we meet Shalev’s amazing Grandma Tonia, who arrived in Palestine by boat from Russia in 1923 and lived in a constant state of battle with what she viewed as the family’s biggest enemy in their new land: dirt.

Grandma Tonia was never seen without a cleaning rag over her shoulder. She received visitors outdoors. She allowed only the most privileged guests to enter her spotless house. Hilarious and touching, Grandma Tonia and her regulations come richly to life in a narrative that circles around the arrival into the family’s dusty agricultural midst of the big, shiny American sweeper sent as a gift by Great-uncle Yeshayahu (he who had shockingly emigrated to the sinful capitalist heaven of Los Angeles!). America, to little Meir and to his forebears, was a land of hedonism and enchanting progress; of tempting luxuries, dangerous music, and degenerate gum-chewing; and of women with painted fingernails. The sweeper, a stealth weapon from Grandpa Aharon’s American brother meant to beguile the hardworking socialist household with a bit of American ease, was symbolic of the conflicts and visions of the family in every respect.

The fate of Tonia’s “svieeperrr”—hidden away for decades in a spotless closed-off bathroom after its initial use—is a family mystery that Shalev determines to solve. The result, in this cheerful translation by Evan Fallenberg, is pure delight, as Shalev brings to life the obsessive but loving Tonia, the pioneers who gave his childhood its spirit of wonder, and the grit and humor of people building ever-new lives.

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole

One May day in 1896, at a dining-room table in Cambridge, England, a meeting took place between a Romanian-born maverick Jewish intellectual and twin learned Presbyterian Scotswomen, who had assembled to inspect several pieces of rag paper and parchment. It was the unlikely start to what would prove a remarkable, continent-hopping, century-crossing saga, and one that in many ways has revolutionized our sense of what it means to lead a Jewish life.

In Sacred Trash, MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole and acclaimed essayist Adina Hoffman tell the story of the retrieval from an Egyptian geniza, or repository for worn-out texts, of the most vital cache of Jewish manuscripts ever discovered. This tale of buried scholarly treasure weaves together unforgettable portraits of Solomon Schechter and the other heroes of this drama with explorations of the medieval documents themselves—letters and poems, wills and marriage contracts, Bibles, money orders, fiery dissenting tracts, fashion-conscious trousseaux lists, prescriptions, petitions, and mysterious magical charms. Presenting a panoramic view of nine hundred years of vibrant Mediterranean Judaism, Hoffman and Cole bring modern readers into the heart of this little-known trove, whose contents have rightly been dubbed “the Living Sea Scrolls.” Part biography and part meditation on the supreme value the Jewish people has long placed on the written word, Sacred Trash is above all a gripping tale of adventure and redemption.

Until the Dawn’s Light by Aharon Appelfeld

From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer (“One of the best novelists alive” —Irving Howe): a Jewish woman marries a gentile laborer in turn-of-the-century Austria, with disastrous results.

A high school honor student bound for university and a career as a mathematician, Blanca lives with her parents in a small town in Austria in the early years of the twentieth century. At school one day she meets Adolf, who comes from a family of peasant laborers. Tall and sturdy, plainspoken and uncomplicated, Adolf is unlike anyone Blanca has ever met. And Adolf is awestruck by beautiful, brilliant Blanca–even though she is Jewish. When Blanca is asked by school administrators to tutor Adolf, the inevitable happens: they fall in love. And when Adolf asks her to marry him, Blanca abandons her plans to attend university, converts to Christianity, and leaves her family, her friends, and her old life behind.

Almost immediately, things begin to go horribly wrong. Told in a series of flashbacks as Blanca and her son flee from their town with the police in hot pursuit, the tragic story of Blanca’s life with Adolf recalls a time and place that are no more but that powerfully reverberate in collective memory.

Good Living Street by Tim Bonyhady

Vienna and its Secessionist movement at the turn of the last century is the focus of this extraordinary social portrait told through an eminent Viennese family, headed by Hermine and Moriz Gallia, who were among the great patrons of early-twentieth-century Viennese culture at its peak.

Good Living Street takes us from the Gallias’ middle-class prosperity in the provinces of central Europe to their arrival in Vienna, following the provision of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1848 that gave Jews freedom of movement and residence, legalized their religious services, opened public service and professions up to them, and allowed them to marry.

The Gallias, like so many hundreds of thousands of others, came from across the Hapsburg Empire to Vienna, and for the next two decades the city that became theirs was Europe’s center of art, music, and ideas.

The Gallias lived beyond the Ringstrasse in Vienna’s Fourth District on the Wohllebengasse (translation: Good Living Street), named after Vienna’s first nineteenth-century mayor.

In this extraordinary book we see the amassing of the Gallias’ rarefied collections of art and design; their cosmopolitan society; we see their religious life and their efforts to circumvent the city’s rampant anti-Semitism by the family’s conversion to Catholicism along with other prominent intellectual Jews, among them Gustav Mahler. While conversion did not free Jews from anti-Semitism, it allowed them to secure positions otherwise barred to them.

Two decades later, as Kristallnacht raged and Vienna burned, the Gallias were having movers pack up the contents of their extraordinary apartment designed by Josef Hoffmann. The family successfully fled to Australia, bringing with them the best private collection of art and design to escape Nazi Austria; included were paintings, furniture, three sets of silver cutlery, chandeliers, letters, diaries, books and bookcases, furs—chinchilla, sable, sealskin—and even two pianos, one upright and one Steinway.

Not since the publication of Carl Schorske’s acclaimed portrait of Viennese modernism, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, has a book so brilliantly—and completely—given us this kind of close-up look at turn-of-the-last-century Viennese culture, art, and daily life—when the Hapsburg Empire was fading and modernism and a new order were coming to the fore.

Good Living Street re-creates its world, atmosphere, people, energy, and spirit, and brings it all to vivid life.

The Eichmann Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt

The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale that had never been seen before.

Award-winning historian Deborah E. Lipstadt gives us an overview of the trial and analyzes the dramatic effect that the survivors’ courtroom testimony—which was itself not without controversy—had on a world that had until then regularly commemorated the Holocaust but never fully understood what the millions who died and the hundreds of thousands who managed to survive had actually experienced.

As the world continues to confront the ongoing reality of genocide and ponder the fate of those who survive it, this trial of the century, which has become a touchstone for judicial proceedings throughout the world, offers a legal, moral, and political framework for coming to terms with unfathomable evil. Lipstadt infuses a gripping narrative with historical perspective and contemporary urgency.

The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg informs her literary analysis of the biblical text with concepts drawn from Freud, Winnicott, Laplanche, and other psychoanalytic thinkers to make a powerful argument for the idea that the creators of the midrashic commentary, the medieval rabbinic commentators, and the Hassidic commentators were themselves on some level aware of the complex interplay between conscious and unconscious levels of experience and used this knowledge in their interpretations.

In her analysis of the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Jonah, Abraham, Rebecca, Isaac, Joseph and his brothers, Ruth, and Esther, Zornberg offers fascinating insights into the interaction between consciousness and unconsciousness as she enhances our appreciation of the Bible as the foundational text in our quest to understand what it means to be human.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. – Franz Kafka

If you haven’t yet delved into the existential masterpieces of Franz Kafka, there’s no better time than the present, thanks to a newly-cohesive jacket overhaul by our own Peter Mendelsund. The eye-catching new look is sure to liven up your bookshelf. The re-designed Kafka oeuvre was one of Vanity Fair’s 2011 holiday gift picks. Peter talks more about the design process at his blog.

Click a jacket to learn more!

“Shalev’s personal reflections of quirky uncles, family squabbles, the rich history of his Jewish heritage and the legacy of the omnipresent American vacuum touch the heart and tickle the funny bone. An unconventional and quite hilarious family scrapbook.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Tender, hilarious . . . quirky.” —Publishers Weekly

“Celebrates family, quirks and all.” —Booklist