The Book of Esther

Praise

“An imaginative, engrossing, and entertaining storytelling tapestry. . . . As addicting as a Jewish Game of Thrones.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Richly imagined. . . . A classic quest tale. . . . A kind of steampunk fantasia. . . . Barton’s book is Jewishly very knowledgeable, drawing on a broad range of history, mythology, and liturgy to create an internally coherent alternative universe.” —Adam Kirsch, Tablet

“A surreal meld of counterfactual history and Jewish lore. . . . Raises complex questions about alternate history and mythology.” —The New Yorker

“Barton’s audacious tale of an otherworldly uprising against the Nazis is a wild pageant of tumult and valor, magic and inventiveness, which, for all its humor, sensuality, steampunk brio, and full-tilt military action, is profoundly inquisitive. . . . With intimations of Cynthia Ozick and Michael Chabon, Barton is spellbinding and provocative in this refulgent, topsy-turvy, questing fantasy.” —Booklist

“In this thrillingly inventive novel, Emily Barton has created a whole world worth losing yourself in. She sneaks up on you with a story so original you’ll wonder how she found it, and so vital that it seems amazing no one has ever told it before.” —Mary-Louise Parker

“A bold reimagining of some of the darkest history of World War II. Barton’s Esther is like a Jewish Joan of Arc, except the calling she feels is entirely her own—and to honor it, she has to turn the ways of the world upside down.” —Alexander Chee 

“A big, thrilling revisionist history and an audacious, wholly realized feat of imagination.” —Hanya Yanagihara

“It would be tempting to set The Book of Esther alongside other contemporary Jewish counterfactual fiction, like Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. All three focus on the time between the rise of the Nazis and the establishment of the State of Israel, and, in different ways, they scramble the founding myths of postwar American Judaism. But Barton is hunting bigger, more philosophical game than Chabon or Roth, both of whom imagine undoing Zionism or American democracy’s acceptance of Jews; Barton, however, is braiding a rope of alternative tradition, strong and supple enough to hold modernity without breaking.” —The Forward

“The Book of Esther stands out on the originality and success of its imagined world.” —The Kansas City Star

“A glorious mash-up of alternate history, spiritual inquiry, and galloping adventure story, spiced with fantastic technology and a dash of Mulan, The Book of Esther is breathtaking in its ambition and scope.” —Chronogram

“Barton’s novel is an inventive and detailed tale about a nation on the brink of war that will keep the reader interested through the last scene.” —The Jewish Standard

“Super badass. . . . an interesting and often feminist book with superb writing.”  —Filthy Casket

“Emily Barton has formerly reimagined the history of New York, and now she’s reconceived historic Europe as an entirely different place, replete with Jewish woman warriors on mechanical steeds and multiplying golems. Exhilarating in its freedom and exacting in its thought—a fine book.” —John Crowley