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It is 1988. Judit Klemmer is a filmmaker who is assembling a fortieth-anniversary official documentary about the birth of Judenstaat, the Jewish homeland surrendered by defeated Germany in 1948. Her work is complicated by Cold War tensions between the competing U.S. and Soviet empires and by internal conflicts among the “black-hat” Orthodox Jews, the far more worldly Bundists, and reactionary Saxon nationalists who are still bent on destroying the new Jewish state.
But Judit’s work has far more personal complications. A widow, she has yet to deal with her own heart’s terrible loss—the very public assassination of her husband, Hans Klemmer, shot dead while conducting a concert.
Then a shadowy figure slips her a note with new and potentially dangerous information about her famous husband’s murder.
“Judenstaat uses the technique of alternate history to offer biting commentary on modern Israel, on the post–Cold War era in which we live, and on religion and nationhood.”
—Cory Doctorow, coeditor of Boing Boing and author of Little Brother
“The glory of Simone Zelitch’s page-turning alternate history is the uncanny precision with which she has deftly transformed the threads of actual events into the stunning new fabric of her novel.”
—BookPage
“Zelitch has had the courage, the wit, and the skill to imagine an alternate history of the Jews of Europe after World War II.”
—John Crowley, World Fantasy Award–winning author of Little, Big
“With wit and grace, Simone Zelitch draws the collective grief of the generations living in the shadow of the Holocaust. Part mystery, part ghost story, her smart, politically savvy alternative history explores the growth of a nation and the secrets of the major players involved.”
—Kit Reed, author of Where
“Israel in Europe! What a rich, provocative idea—and what a writer to take it on, with the imagination, heart, and depth it deserves.”
—Terry Bisson, author of Any Day Now