This book traces the origins of the legend that Jewish musicians in concentration camps were forced to play a Tango of Death at the gas chambers and shows how in this legend the actual history is hidden, distorted, or even lost altogether.

Mikhail Baranovskiy weaves a remarkably poignant story of loyalty, betrayal, honor, hope, love, and the effects of enforced mediocrity on talent, based on true events from World War II. Vienna, Austria, 1932. A violin virtuoso and musical genius, Jacob Mund's quick ascent to conducting the Vienna Philharmonic isn't too surprising. With a successful career, adoration and praise from all corners, and a beautiful fiancee, Mund has everything going for him - but that soon changes. With German occupation leading to the total ban of Jewish composers in Vienna, Mund accepts an offer from the Lwow Orchestra and relocates with his now-pregnant wife, Sophia, and a talented musician and close friend, Shmulik. But misfortune catches up with them. Mund's happy days in Lwow (Poland, today Lviv, Ukraine), come to an abrupt and unfortunate end when the Germans take over. His Jewish parents are robbed and shot on the streets, and he is shipped off to the Janowska concentration camp along with his wife, his daughter, and the other Lwow musicians. By a lucky twist of fate and with the help of an unexpected ally, his daughter Shera and his friend Shmulik escape the hell of the concentration camp, allowing them a chance to begin life anew. Mund is not so fortunate. Baranovskiy weaves an incredibly powerful and haunting tale that captures the horrors of Jewish persecution at the height of the World War II. If you enjoyed Born Survivors, The Lost and All But My Life, then you need to get your hands on this literary masterpiece. A famous writer, playwright, and screenwriter, Mikhail Baranovskiy has been recognized with many literary awards and has authored various children and adult books, as well as numerous television series, including Volkov's Hour, Girls, The Sisters Korolev, and Antique Dealer. Scroll to the top of the page and click the "Buy Now" button to get a copy today!

"Yuri Vynnychuk's novel Tango of Death is a literary masterpiece about the magic of pre-war Lviv." Dariusz Nowacki in Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland)

A collection mimicking the great writers of literary history, with each writer's name rearranged as a title, creating the subject for a parody rendered in the author's style.

Death Tango traces the Middle East dynamic back to the events of March 27–29, 2002. March 27, Passover Eve, witnessed the most bloody and traumatic Arab terrorist attack in Israel’s history, the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya. On March 28, an Arab League summit in Beirut adopted the Arab Peace Initiative, the most far-reaching Arab attempt to set parameters for ending the Israel-Arab conflict. The next day, Israel invaded and reoccupied the West Bank in Operation Defensive Shield. Alpher illustrates the interaction between these three critical events and depicts the key personalities—politicians, generals, and a star journalist—involved on all sides. It moves from a suicide bombing to the deliberations of Arab leaders; from the Israel Prime Minister’s Office—where Ariel Sharon fulminated against Yasser Arafat—to Washington, where the United States fumbled and misunderstood the dynamics at work; and on to the Jenin refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers won a bloody military battle but Israel lost the media battle of public opinion. Based on extensive interviews and his deep personal knowledge, Alpher analyzes the three days in late March 2002 as a catalyst of extensive change in the Middle East, concluding that Arabs and Israelis are dancing a kind of “death tango.”

Paul Celan, Europe's most compelling postwar poet, was a German-speaking, East European Jew. His writing exposes and illumines the wounds that Nazi destructiveness left on language. John Felstiner's sensitive and accessible book is the first critical biography of Celan in any language. It offers new translations of well-known and little-known poems--including a chapter on Celan's famous "Deathfugue"--plus his speeches, prose fiction, and letters. The book also presents hitherto unpublished photos of the poet and his circle. Drawing on interviews with Celan's family and friends and his personal library in Normandy and Paris, as well as voluminous German commentary, Felstiner tells the poet's gripping story: his birth in 1920 in Romania, the overnight loss of his parents in a Nazi deportation, his experience of forced labor and Soviet occupation during the war, and then his difficult exile in Paris. The life's work of Paul Celan emerges through readings of his poems within their personal and historical matrix. At the same time, Felstiner finds fresh insights by opening up the very process of translating Celan's poems. To present this poetry and the strain of Jewishness it displays, Felstiner uncovers Celan's sources in the Bible and Judaic mysticism, his affinities with Kafka, Heine, Hölderlin, Rilke, and Nelly Sachs, his fascination with Heidegger and Buber, his piercing translations of Shakespeare, Dickinson, Mandelshtam, Apollinaire. First and last, Felstiner explores the achievement of a poet surviving in his mother tongue, the German language that had passed, Celan said, "through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech."

From its earliest manifestations on the street corners of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires to its ascendancy as a global cultural form, tango has continually exceeded the confines of the dance floor or the music hall. In Tango Lessons, scholars from Latin America and the United States explore tango's enduring vitality. The interdisciplinary group of contributors—including specialists in dance, music, anthropology, linguistics, literature, film, and fine art—take up a broad range of topics. Among these are the productive tensions between tradition and experimentation in tango nuevo, representations of tango in film and contemporary art, and the role of tango in the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Taken together, the essays show that tango provides a kaleidoscopic perspective on Argentina's social, cultural, and intellectual history from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Contributors. Esteban Buch, Oscar Conde, Antonio Gómez, Morgan James Luker, Carolyn Merritt, Marilyn G. Miller, Fernando Rosenberg, Alejandro Susti