In the NYT Sunday there was a list of the 100 best books of 2010. One of them, The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer, is a novel with a Holocaust angle that got a mixed review by Janet Maslin earlier this year. Orringer is the grand-daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Oh, and there’s another book with Holocaust echoes on the recommended list, by Nicole Krauss. And Cynthia Ozick, too.
I can’t help remembering Ricky Gervais’s joke, about telling Kate Winslet to do a Holocaust movie to get an Academy award.
In 2006, by the way, Orringer won the Anne and Robert Cowan Writers’ Award, which is administered by the Jewish Community Federation in the Bay Area. It has a clear mission:
“The Anne and Robert Cowan Writers’ Fund was established to recognize and award writers on an annual basis who have made an exceptional impact in the Bay Area through their uniquely Jewish perspective. Awardees must be published Jewish writers who reside in the Bay Area, are considered exceptionally gifted by their peers and readers, write with a high degree of creativity and intelligence, include positive Jewish themes in their subject matter and refer to Israel in a supportive and constructive manner.”
Hardly a lifechanger, $5,000, but a nice award. I can’t imagine that the Cowan Fund agenda shaped Orringer’s work, or the NYT’s literary agenda, but– you have to wonder, when will the Nakba be granted literary prestige? And American foundations give out grants in support of Palestinian national books?
