Book of the Moment: The Ministry of Special Cases

Seven years after his debut, award-winning short –story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander published his much anticipated first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases. It’s set in 1976, at the outset of Argentina’s Dirty War, in which nearly 30 thousand people “disappeared” at the hands of the military junta.

LA-based Book Club Moderator Beverly Seehoff highly recommends this book, “To me, the book is outstanding for

demonstrating that there’s no better way to understand history than to understand what it does to an individual – in this case, how the Dirty War impacted one family. Nathan writes of dread, despair, paranoia, rage and loss with such poetry, that I read this novel in awe of his talent.  He’s a writer who can  craft a tale both lyrical and devastating. It took Englander, by the way, ten years to research and write the novel.