Loving Strangers: A Camphorwood Chest, A Legacy, A Son Returns

Loving Strangers: A Camphorwood Chest, A Legacy, A Son Returns has already won the Hazel Rowley Prize (US, 2020) for the best proposal for a first-time biographer and was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize (UK, 2019) for the best unpublished biography.

At its core, Jay Prosser is writing a family memoir that builds a bridge across the terrible divides of our times. It’s a Jewish book, but not Just a Jewish book. It moves Jewish writing away from its customary setting of the Holocaust and Europe, transporting Jewish identity instead to Iraq, India, China and Singapore: places and cultures that most people (including Jews themselves) don’t associate with Jewish identity. It shows Jews integrating with others, not divisive, not separate: not antagonistic.

The issue of intermarriage is increasingly important for all racial groups and this book speaks beyond the Jewish community, in relation to how we treat strangers in the form of immigrants and other communities.