Exodus: The Second Book of Moses
Grove Press , $2.95

This well known narrative crackles with tension and drama: a harsh, hasty uprooting from Egypt, a "stiff-necked" people so beaten down by slavery that the notion of freedom leaves them bewildered; a vengeful, capricious god who is unafraid to slay thousands of his chosen people when they disobey. The Israelites wander in a vast, unfamiliar desert for decades, uncertain if all this talk of a promised land will ever turn into reality.

Woven into the "tempestuous, epic myth" as Israeli novelist David Grossman calls it in the book's introduction, is the legal and religious code that transforms the Israelites from a beleaguered clan into a nation. Those forty years spent stranded in the desert remains pivotal, Grossman explains, "a lengthy cocoon stage, the final one before the Jewish people was hatched into history."

EVA HOFFMAN
Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language
Penguin USA, $13.95

If exile is the hallmark of Jewish experience in the 20th century, then Eva Hoffman is a representative of the age. Born in Krakow, Poland, to a Jewish family that had survived the Holocaust, she emigrated as a child to Canada, where she was thrust into a new language and a new culture. In this intimate memoir, she recalls her struggle to belong in this alien world, and the later challenges to her identity as a student in Texas and a writer in New York.

As she tries to reconcile her femininity, her religion, and her intelligence, Hoffman shows how many different "languages" we all have to master, and provides an unforgettable portrait of a Jewish woman's coming of age.

MOACYR SCLIAR
The Centaur in the Garden
University of Wisconsin Press, $15.95

"I am a centaur, a mythological creature, but I am also Guedali Tartakovsky," proclaims the narrator of this affecting novel. Born half-human and half-horse to immigrants from Russia who staked out a new life in Brazil, the boy struggles with his identity. Much of the book's deadpan comedy arises from the intersection of the mythical with this real Jewish community. When the lonely Guedali finally meets a centauress, there's one problem: She is beautiful, but she is also a gentile.

Tartakovsky is a vivid symbol of the dual consciousness of Jews inspired to leave Europe for South America by philanthropist Baron de Hirsch's utopian vision—forever an outsider, yet uniquely suited to Brazil's farmlands.

ALLEGRA GOODMAN
Kaaterskill Falls
Delta, $13.95

Set in the mid-1970s, this sweeping novel follows three Orthodox families over two eventful summers spent in the bucolic town where they retreat each June from the grittier confines of Washington Heights. Elizabeth Shulman, perfect wife and mother, begins to long for the secular world's "loose days and weeks." Her neighbor, Hungarian refugee Andras Melish, undergoes a crisis of faith, unable to understand his young wife's piety. Meanwhile, Rav Kirshner, the group's spiritual leader, discovers he's dying and must choose a son—Isaiah, dull but devout, or clever but worldly Jeremy—to take his place.

From their multiple perspectives, Goodman creates an exquisite group portrait that explores how individuals shape their identities within—and against—the seemingly unshakable community laws that define them.

ANDRÉ ACIMAN
Out of Egypt
Riverhead Books, $14.00

For Aciman's family, home is a mercurial concept. In 1905, the Sephardic Acimans moved from Turkey to Alexandria, where they flourished financially for decades. But theirs was a life in exile: expecting to be sent to Germany during World War II, the women knitted woolens. As a boy, when asked which country he hailed from, he replied, "France, of course."

Aciman sketches a cast of eccentric characters—from his Ladino-speaking grandmothers to Uncle Vili, an Italian fascist turned British spy—and creates an elegy to a lost culture. Fittingly, his last night in Alexandria falls on Passover; Aciman flees the seder ("I don't want to be in Jerusalem next year"), heading to the waterfront. There, he writes, "I caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved."

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