Anouk Markovits

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I Am Forbidden

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

Takes us into the heart of the Hasidic community in  New York, where two Hungarian-Romanian Jewish children orphaned during  the barbarity of the Second World War are set to begin new lives

Fascinating... Offers a glimpse into the real world of Hasidic life

Using the language of the scriptures, Markovits depicts religion’s potential for both beauty and cruelty, and the inevitability of transgression even in the most devout life

The writing is stunning, the execution flawless and the plot utterly gripping (4 stars)

I Am Forbidden is a powerful portrayal of family, faith and history which sweeps the reader across continents and generations, from pre-war Transylvania to present-day New York, via Paris and England. Immersive, beautiful, moving, it explores in devastating detail what happens when unwavering love, unyielding law and centuries of tradition collide.

An extraordinary literary debut about three generations of women that takes us from pre-World War Two Transylvania via Paris and England to present-day New York. The prose and historical context matches Suite Francaise and The Tiger's Wife

Anouk Markovits grew up in France, in an ultra-orthodox Satmar home. She attended a religious seminary in England instead of high school. She left home at the age of nineteen to avoid an arranged marriage. Markovits is the author of I Am Forbidden, which the New York Times described as an “elegant, enthralling novel” and which the Sunday Telegraph of London praised for “luminously beautiful prose.” The book was selected by Random House to re-launch its Hogarth imprint, originally founded in 1917 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Translations of I Am Forbidden are forthcoming in a dozen countries. Markovits’s first novel, Pur Coton, written in French, was published by Gallimard.

I Am Forbidden

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