🎤︎︎ New Five Books Episode: Jason Diamond on Being a (Jewish-) American Author

In this conversation, Jason Diamond unpacks what it means to be an American, Jewish, or Jewish-American author. We also discuss family secrets, Jewish gangsters, the humor and alienation of Franz Kafka, and how Art Spiegelman’s Maus taught Jason to accept his family’s silences.

Jason’s debut novel, Kaplan’s Plot, follows Elijah Mendes, who returns to Chicago after his tech business collapses and discovers that his family owns a Jewish cemetery, where a man he’s never heard of - his great-uncle Solomon Kaplan - is buried. As Elijah begins to untangle his family’s past, the novel moves between his present-day relationship with his mother, Eve, who is dying of cancer, and the earlier story of his grandfather, Yitz Kaplan. That past narrative traces Yitz and his brother Sol from a pogrom in Odessa to their arrival in America alone, and follows the brothers’ complicated bond as Yitz rises to become a Jewish gangster in 1920s Chicago.

Jason Diamond has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal, McSweeney's, NPR, and many other outlets. He is the author of The Sprawl and the memoir Searching For John Hughes. He is the co-author (with Nicolas Heller) of New York Nico's Guide to NYC. Kaplan’s Plot was the 2026 Fiction Award winner from the Association of Jewish Libraries.

1. ⁠Maus by Art Spiegelman

2. ⁠Amerika by Franz Kafka

3. ⁠Be Here Now by Ram Dass

4. ⁠The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler

5. ⁠Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond

Other Guests Who Chose Art Spiegelman’s Maus:

• Benjamin Resnick on the Enduring Precariousness of Jewish Life

• Georgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History and Kindness as Resistance

At the end of this week’s episode you’ll find a ‘One Book Moment’ – a bonus book selection by a friend of the podcast. This week our selection is from literary insider Erika Dreifus, editor and publisher of the e-newsletter The Practicing Writer, and of the Machberet blog, where she shares Jewish literary links. Find her at ErikaDreifus.com

What Else We’re Reading Now:

This buzzy book about a woman who livestreams her life for seven days to save her comatose sister lives up to the hype, pulling you into a feverish spiral of spectacle, intimacy, and self-sabotage that’s impossible to look away from.

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The Five Books is a partner organization of Jewish Book Council, a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. In celebration of 100 years of Jewish Book Month, JBC introduces Nu Reads—a bi-monthly subscription delivering the most compelling new Jewish books straight to your door. For more information on Nu Reads, visit NuReads.org. To stay up to date on ways to celebrate Jewish Book Month, visit www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/jewish-book-month-100.

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