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I'm fascinated by the intersections of history and personal lives. In doing the research for my books, I've learned so many fascinating nuggets about different people and places and times that I enjoy sharing. I also love to talk about the craft of writing, how books are made, whether we're talking about research, the sentence, world-building, character. I also love chatting with literature lovers and aspiring writers and hearing their stories, exchanging thoughts and ideas. Above all, I enjoy great conversations!
Whenever I talk with readers, I always learn something. Writing can be a lonely profession, so it's wonderful to take time out of my day to have a meaningful chat. Drop me a line!
I'm grateful for this opportunity to connect in a meaningful way!
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From the award-winning author of The View from Stalin’s Head, Hotel Cuba is a stunning work of fiction about two sheltered Russian Jewish refugee sisters, one sensible and one impractical, who find themselves trapped in hedonistic Prohibition-era 1920s Havana while trying to emigrate to America.
“Deeply moving, compulsively readable, HOTEL CUBA chronicles the early twentieth century immigrant experience with a profound understanding and crackling urgency I’ve not previously encountered. I could not put it down and I could not stop thinking about it long after I’d reached its stunning conclusion. In short: You need to read this book. Right now.”
— Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
Have you ever searched for your high school crush online?
Two decades after they first met, Medieval Historian Ari Silverman is reconnecting with his high school obsession Justin Jackson, now happily married to a woman and the first African-American CEO of a successful dating website. While preparing to see Justin again, Ari recalls his relationship with Justin in the segregated suburbs of Detroit during the early 1990s and the secrets they still share. At the same time, he’s also grappling with the fate of his ex-husband, a colleague accused of sexually harassing a student. Ultimately the two stories converge, and Ari comes to a fateful decision about his past and present, his life and his inner character. Framed by the meteoric rise and fall of the band Nirvana and the #metoo movement, Nirvana is Here touches on issues of identity, race, sex, and family with both poignancy and unexpected humor.
“Like everything Hamburger writes, NIRVANA IS HERE is compulsively readable, charming, and suffused with deep humanity. The title is truth in advertising, folks: this novel is nirvana indeed.”
— Elisa Albert, author of After Birth
In the summer of 2000, Israel teeters between total war and total peace. Similarly on edge, Helen Michaelson, a respectable suburban housewife from Michigan, has brought her ailing husband and rebellious college-age son, Jeremy, to Jerusalem. She hopes the journey will inspire Jeremy to reconnect with his faith and find meaning in his life… or at least get rid of his nose ring.
Yet in seductive and dangerous surroundings, with the rumbling of violence and change in the air, in a part of the world where “there are no modern times,” mother and son become new, old, and surprising versions of themselves.
Funny, erotic, searingly insightful, and profoundly moving, Faith for Beginners is a stunning debut novel from a vibrant new voice in fiction.
“The novel is consistently amusing, particularly when Hamburger offers barbed observations about the banalities of tourist culture.”
— The New York Times
