Joshua Furst

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A Climb, a Crime and a Debut Novel

By Joshua Furst

On September 10, 1928, a Latvian Jew was bludgeoned to death as he and his son hiked the Tyrolean Alps. The man’s son, Philipp Halsmann, 22 years old at the time, was convicted of the murder and spent the next two years in prison in Austria. In the appeal, Halsmann’s lawyer decimated what little evidence there was, but on the strength of an “experts’ report” from the medical facility of the University of Innsbruck, conjuring a brutal and embittered psychological portrait of the boy out of little more than the physical evidence of his father’s body, the sentence was upheld. Jewish and Jewish-sympathetic intellectuals and powerbrokers across Europe rallied for Halsmann’s release, condemning the verdict for what it was, a bald case of antisemitism, and Halsmann was eventually freed.Read More

Muffled Singer

By Joshua Furst

If the charge of fiction is to tell a story that reveals the mysteries of human behavior, Ira Sher is writing for all the right reasons. His second novel, “Singer,” is a book damp with the sadness and confusion of middle-aged men waking up to the muddle they’ve made of their lives.Read More


     

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