(Fiction, 310 pp., 2008)
In the 1930s, Tristan Brodsky escapes the Bronx, finds success as a novelist, and marries a sensitive poet. Fifty years later, their hiphop-obsessed grandson, Tris, gets involved with a half-Jewish Czech refugee who is a photographer for a Black jazz band, and starts writing novels, too. Tensions arise when the writers make use of each others’ life stories to create new fictions. Exploring the delicate lines between appropriation and exploitation, between Black and Jewish people, and between the give and take of artistic partnership, this sensitive novel is a powerful statement about identity in 20th century America.
