Description
In BRUNO’S CONVERSION, a transformative exploration of faith and modern love, Bruno Kirsch, a divorced middle-aged professor of French literature, finds himself stranded in Miami Beach over Christmas break when his “shiksa” lover, Mary—whose idea it was to vacation there—abandons him for home back in New York City.
Soon after, Bruno sets his sights on a striking one-legged woman named Suzie, whom he spots on his morning walk along the beach, and quickly develops an all-consuming obsession over how to approach her. While he fantasizes about their future love, the Hasids of Miami Beach act as a potent reminder of his heritage and conflicted faith.
Eventually caught in a hypnotic tourist trap, a disoriented Bruno is forced to confront his religious convictions, his objectification of women, and his strange new independence. Inescapably unforgiving and darkly comical, Tsipi Keller’s BRUNO’S CONVERSION cleverly captures the post-divorce single life of middle-aged men and all their vulnerabilities.
Fiction. Family & Relationships.
“Masterful in her articulation of Bruno’s dreams and insecurities, Keller presents a lost soul on a possible path to redemption—or a nightmare. The story is imbued with a delicious sense of rising menace and, as the final page is reached, the reader only wishes the harrowing pleasure did not have to end.”
—Janice Ellsworth, Author
Praise for the Author’s Work:
“Tsipi Keller has taken us into a writer's very being. It is hard work and all-consuming … This is a provocative story that stays with the reader.”
—Jewish Book Council on The Prophet of Tenth Street
“Poet and novelist Keller handles this poignant tale with the deftness of a writer who has struggled alongside her characters.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Prophet of Tenth Street
“This marvelously engaging and pleasurable novel is like a cross between watching a sly Eric Rohmer film about the spiritual crisis of vacation and reading a Jean Rhys interior monologue of a woman in extremis… A wickedly readable, psychologically astute and drolly knowing fiction.”
—Phillip Lopate, Author of The Glorious American Essay, on Jackpot
“Keller expertly charts Maggie's transformation in this accomplished and oddly gripping novel.”
—Publishers Weekly on Jackpot
Author Bio
Novelist, and a translator of Hebrew literature, Tsipi Keller is the author of seventeen books, and the recipient of several literary awards, including National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Grants, and an Armand G. Erpf Translation Award from Columbia University. Individual translations have appeared in literary journals and anthologies in the U.S. and Europe, as well as in The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization (Yale University Press, 2012, 2020). Her most recent translations include Mordechai Geldman's Years I Walked at Your Side (SUNY Press, 2018); David Avidan's Futureman (Phoneme Media, 2017), and Erez Bitton's You Who Cross My Path (BOA Editions, 2015). Her latest novel, Waves & Tonics, was published by Ravenna Press in 2022.
Author City: W PALM BEACH, FL USA