The End of the Jews: A Novel

The Brodskys are a family of artists and writers thwarted in a restless search for love, happiness, and an identity that fits. Tristan Brodsky, born of the bustling New World shtetl of the Bronx, goes on to become one of the swaggering mid-century Jewish geniuses who remake American culture, while slowly suffocating his wife, a poet with secrets of her own. His grandson Tris, aka RISK, is a graffiti writer and revolutionary (desperately searching for a revolution) who, at the opposite end of the 20th century, replays his grandfather's immigrant story as farce. Across an ocean, Nina Hricek is a teenaged photographer who flees communist Prague with a traveling American jazz band, only to find herself trapped in a volatile affair with a man twice her age before becoming a part of the Brodsky clan. Their stories of creation, identity, family, and infidelity unfold in parallel narratives that jump through time and space, until their dilemmas slowly converge--in the end, the survival of each demands the sacrifice of another. This is an ambitious and affecting family drama elevated by Mansbach's imaginative storytelling techniques and deep empathy for his characters. Boldly reworking the story of Jewish assimilation around the tale of a family of fierce individuals, this is the story of anyone willing to fight for love, art, and a place in the world.