Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

EXODUS

Deborah Feldman

A Memoir

Deborah Feldman, author of the explosive New York Times–bestselling memoir UNORTHODOX, returns with an extraordinary follow-up that traces her new life as an independent young woman and single mother, and her search for an authentic and personal Jewish identity.

Life as a young, single mother in New York City presented her with a unique set of challenges: how to raise her son in the "real" world, while maintaining his ties to his Orthodox father, how to support herself as a writer, and how to negotiate the dating sceneperhaps the most daunting task for a young woman who was deprived of a sex education and entered into an arranged marriage as a teenager.
Culminating in an unforgettable trip across Europe to retrace her grandmother's life during the Holocaust, EXODUS is a deeply moving exploration of the mysterious bonds that tie us to family and religion, the bonds we must sometimes break to find our true selves.

As a woman and a writer, Feldman broke all the rules she was raised to live by, and in the process has discovered a world of like-minded outcasts and misfits, bound together in the universal struggle for self-acceptance and healing. Feldman is a captivating writer and beguiling storyteller, and her singular life has been an inspiration to countless others elsewhere.

Deborah Feldman was raised in the Satmar Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. Her first memoir, Unorthodox was a New York Times bestseller and has been made into a miniseries on Netflix. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and currently lives in New England with her son.

Available products
Book Published 2021-08-31 by Plume
Book Published 2021-08-31 by Plume

Comments

A barebones description of the storyline doesn't even begin to do justice to this magnificent piece of literature, which will stand the test of time. Like Feldman's previous book, this is another captivating memoir that will find a wide audience

Overall, Exodus is a satisfying sequel to Unorthodox, which shows how Deborah Feldman went on to the next step after getting her own freedom from the bonds of a strictly insular society... [a] chronicle of a continuing journey of self-discovery... There are many satisfying finds and revelations along the road, but there are also plenty of bumps, frustrations, disappointments and pitfalls, which is expected when one spends their formative years being closed off from the rest of the outside world, and is confined to the boundaries of a Brooklyn neighborhood...this book is more about the liberation of Deborah Feldman, and how she copes with this newfound sense of freedom and self-discovery, that can be a shock to some, or a declaration of independence for others.

Czech: Albatros ; Danish: Kristeligt Dagblads ; Dutch: De Geus ; French: Hachette Livre ; Hungarian: Libri Konyvkiado ; Lithuanian: Balto Leidybos ; Polish: Poradnia K ; Romanian: Trei ; Russian: Alpina ; Spanish: PRH Spain

n her first memoir, Unorthodox, Feldman made the courageous choice to cut off ties with her family and the Satmar community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn...Now a divorced woman in her 20s, Feldman chronicles the next phase of her life in her new book [Exodus]...a quest of self-discovery... Some of the most powerful scenes come when Feldman retraces the path of her female ancestors in Hungary and confronts the anti-Semitism of contemporary Europe... Feldman ultimately discovers that her rightful place is wherever she happens to be.

A satisfying story of self-discovery.

Feldman's journey is undeniably and explicitly Jewish, but the aching need to find both a welcoming community and a sense of individuality is one that readers from all walks of life will be able to identify with. Those left unsatisfied with the abrupt ending to Unorthodox will enjoy the more hopeful conclusion to Feldman's second book as well as her more mature and increasingly eloquent writing style.

One woman's search to understand herself and her Jewish heritage... Rich in details of Jewish life and the lives of her grandparents in the World War II era, [Feldman] sensitively portrays the inner struggles of accepting the pervasive feeling of survivor guilt and her own desires to understand the woman she was becoming... An enthralling account of how one Orthodox Jewish woman turned her back on her religion and found genuineness and validity in her new life.