Zvi Jagendorf’s wonderful comic novel about a young Jewish refugee in wartime London is an enchanting blend of sharp humour and crisp observation
Zvi Jagendorf
Zvi Jagendorf is a writer, translator and teacher. He was Booker Prize-longlisted for his comedy-laced story of a boy refugee trying to step out of one world into a very different other
Jagendorf was born in Vienna in 1936 and fled with his family with his family to England just before the war. He would later emigrate to Israel and become a teacher of English and theatre studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Wolfy and the Strudelbakers, Jagendorf’s first novel, has as its central character a young man not unlike the author had been himself – trying to fit in in a new and excitingly strange culture while steeped in the infinitely rich brew of family stories, some comic, others tragic, from middle Europe.