The Book of Numbers

Reading and Talk with the Author Joshua Cohen and Literary Scholar Jan Wilm (video recording available, in English and German)

Autobiography and family history, ghostwriting for beginners and Silicon Valley history, international thriller and sex comedy – Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen is an exuberant novel that pushes the art of book writing in times of the internet to the extreme.

Cohen, a former Talmud scholar, is considered to be “one of the most advanced writers of the present” (FAZ) – this American author’s stories and novels are proof of his prowess in precise observation, virtuoso language, and existential wit.

recording available

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The Old Building is marked in green

Where

Old Building, level 2, Great Hall
Lindenstraße 9–14, 10969 Berlin

Where, when, what?

Video recording of The Book of Numbers, 12 February 2018, in German and English; Jewish Museum Berlin 2018

Recurring themes in his work are religion, displacement, life in exile, and the Holocaust.

Joshua Cohen will read from the Book of Numbers for the book launch of the German translation and will talk to literary scholar Jan Wilm about writing and his experiences as a Samuel Fischer guest professor at the Free University of Berlin.

Joshua Cohen

Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in New Jersey. He received numerous awards for his literary work, including the Pushcart Prize (2012) and the Matanel Prize in Jewish Literature (2013). The magazine GRANTA voted him one of the ten best young American authors of the last ten years. In the winter semester 2017/2018, he is teaching as a Samuel Fischer Guest Professor in Berlin.

In cooperation with Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Schöffling Verlag