Novelist Joshua Cohen visits Buffalo on Saturday

In Brooklyn-based writer Joshua Cohen's new novel, "A Heaven of Others," a young Israeli boy named Jonathan Schwarzstein shopping with his parents on his 10th birthday is approached by a young Palestinian boy, also 10, who embraces him and then sets off a detonator, triggering the explosives in the suicide vest he is wearing. The blast that ensues pulverizes both boys, kills both of Jonathan's parents, and sets off a shock wave of blood-drenched debris cascading down a shop-lined Jerusalem street at projectile force.

What follows is one of the most provocative American novels in recent memory, not only in terms of its politics, but also its narrative eschatology in depicting an afterlife where the boundaries of consciousness and personal identity seem malleable. In an administrative mix-up of Old Testament proportions, the soul of young Jonathan -- seemingly linked to that of his killer -- is separated from his parents and ascends "on the wrong side of a wall, without a passport" to a strange heaven that is not governed by the rules of the Torah and Talmud and populated by Jews, but ruled by the Koran and Hadith and home to Muslim martyrs and their virginal houris. When finding passage to Olam Haba, the more conjectural afterlife of Judaic mysticism proves futile, his disembodied voice becomes the threnody of exile.

"A Heaven of Others" is published by Starcherone Books, Buffalo-based novelist Ted Pelton's independent press that specializes in avant-garde fiction. On Saturday, Starcherone will sponsor a panel discussion and fiction reading featuring Cohen, the 28-year-old wunderkind who is already the author of two much-praised story collections, a novel ("Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto") and writes literary criticism for the Forward, the Jewish-American news magazine that is the descendant of the Jewish Daily Forward.

At 2 p.m. Saturday, Cohen will participate in a panel discussion considering the question "Is Political Fiction Possible?" at Rust Belt Books, 202 Allen St., with noted literary critic Mark Shechner, a professor of English at the University at Buffalo and frequent contributor of reviews to The News, and Pelton, whose own 2006 novel, "Malcolm & Jack" (Spuyten Duyvil), ought to enter into the discussion.

At 8 p.m., Cohen will read from "A Heaven of Others" and his forthcoming "Graven Imaginings" -- said to be an epic novel about the last Jew on earth -- in Hallwalls Cinema, downstairs from Babeville's Asbury Hall at 341 Delaware Ave. (near Tupper).

--R.D. Pohl

Comments

[Ted Pelton]

Thanks for helping publicize these events, Bob. Josh Cohen is a very intense & thoughtful writer & I hope a lot of people come out to see him.

A note on the afternoon session: The forum title suffered a typo on the way to market. "Is A Political Fiction Possible" was what was intended. I thank Bob again for recalling my novel of last year (last year's novels being about as memorable generally as last month's newspapers); "A political fiction" would be one, to my mind, where novels actually participated in our political discourse, which is a long way from where we are. This, I think, is the fault of both our novels and our politics, as well as of our citizenry at large and the general dumbing down of political discourse by (and the self-absorption of) our media -- in short, everyone comes in for blame. Perhaps, from our current place, a political fiction is not attainable. But dreaming of such a thing, would that not be something that would improve both our politics and our novels, our reflective engagements with worlds both public and private?

Anyway, I hope to see people turn out this weekend for what promises to be some engaging events.

[bornyesterday]

Joshua Cohen is, to date, just 27 years of age; and, though Wunderkind is certainly a flattering compliment, he is at least a decade or two too old to receive it, since it refers to much younger talents between, say, five and bar-mitzvah age--at the latest. Perhaps you meant prodigy? I hope one doesn't have to be Teddy Pelton's age to be considered a mature writer these days, or I have about 30 more years to kill before I can start writing squirrel fiction and smoking effeminate cigarettes in public . . .

[bornyesterday]

Joshua Cohen is, to date, just 27 years of age; and, though Wunderkind is certainly a flattering compliment, he is at least a decade or two too old to receive it, since it refers to much younger talents between, say, five and bar-mitzvah age--at the latest. Perhaps you meant prodigy? I hope one doesn't have to be Teddy Pelton's age to be considered a mature writer these days, or I have about 30 more years to kill before I can start writing squirrel fiction and smoking effeminate cigarettes in public . . .