Lev Raphael

Hampstead Authors Society Books and Reviews

P R E S S R E L E A S E

Following the amazing reviews for his Holocaust novel in the USA, Lev Raphael will come to London for March 10, 2004 to discuss the book at a new event, at the Wiener Library as part of Jewish Book Week. The publication date for THE GERMAN MONEY has been moved to 27 November 2003 (as planned in our catalogue, enclosed.) We hope reviews will be forthcoming, and Lev can be contacted by e mail on levraphael@comcast.net for interviews and background to his writing career.

Three siblings come together when their cold, unemotional mother dies. They have each been left an inheritance, but the distribution is far from even. One son, Paul has been left the German money, $1 million of German reparation money, a gift as cynical as it is generous. As the siblings quarrel over the money, racked with guilt for abandoning their Alzheimer-riddled father in his nursing home, Paul becomes increasingly suspicious about his mother's sudden death and decides to investigate. Lev Raphael has written a novel in which the problems of a contemporary Jewish family find their roots in the unspeakable secrets of Holocaust survivors.

Fiction / 0-7145-3099-9 / £9.99 / 200pp
A Marion Boyars Paperback Original: 27 November, 2003

September 28, 2003
'What a gift for a writer to be able to sustain unflagging, sweaty-palm suspense in a novel almost through character alone. This is what the prodigious Lev Raphael pulls off in The German Money...one of the most powerful suspense novels in years, a kind of Kafka meets Philip Roth meets le Carré.' The Washington Post

September 22, 2003
'Raphael applies his talents as a suspense writer to this unconventional Holocaust novel… The sharpness of the family portrait and the appeal of the romantic subplot make this an engaging read.' Publishers Weekly

September 26, 2003
'This novel is a finely executed quest, a voyage of discovery, and at last a hopeful tribute to the ability of the damaged human heart to heal. Raphael's talent for physical description is outstanding, but his ability to capture the emotional picture of life among the ruins is unequaled.' The Detroit Jewish News

'If you're starving for a short, powerful novel, buy Lev Raphael's latest book, The German Money, a potent, contemporary story about the complicated lives of three Jewish siblings, descendants of a mother who survived the death factories of the Holocaust, and had a closely guarded a terrible secret, the kind that tears lives apart. Raphael carefully escorts his readers into the sad, touching lives of the siblings, then expertly guides us among the powerful scenes.' Fort Worth Star Telegram

'This is a very intimate book. Bright and creative. Unexpected and significant. For a man who has spent his life refusing to accept that the Holocaust has anything to do with him, inheriting these funds feels like anything but a blessing. Eventually the truth reveals itself in a shocking conclusion. Having recognized that truth, I was wrapped up in Paul's journey and found it quite compelling.' Jewish Book World

The German Money - Recommended for Book Clubs 'My favorite book to recommend to book groups this month is a new novel called The German Money. I agree with Kafka when he says 'A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us', especially when it comes to book club reading. If you don't find your world rocked and your assumptions challenged, then what will there be to discuss? This is an intense novel that insists its reader fall into a world filled with secrets and silences, the world, in fact, of many children of Holocaust survivors. Readers will know what it is to be an angry and embittered young Jewish man who has spent the better part of his life running from something that happened over fifty years ago, to a completely different person. The German Money wields a sharp axe at a vast frozen sea, indeed.' Nicki Leone, FM, North Carolina Public Radio