Daniel Stein, Interpreter is already seen by many as the great Russian novel of our time. Winner of the Russian National Literary Prize and the Simone de Beauvoir Prize, Ludmila Ulitskaya has earned accolades abroad for this groundbreaking work, at last available in English.

The novel tells the story of Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew who miraculously survives the Holocaust by working for the Gestapo as an interpreter. After the war, he converts to Catholicism, becomes a priest, enters the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, and emigrates to Israel. Despite this seemingly impossible progression, the life and destiny of Daniel Stein are not an invention -- the character is based on the life of Oswald Rufeisen, the real Brother Daniel. This innovative, furious, and funny book, compiled as a series of documents -- letters, diary entries, postcards, and other records -- ranges from before the war to modern times and from the shtetl to Haifa to Boston. It tells of a life full of contradictions and undaunted faith. (Overlook Hardcover)

Daniel Stein, Interpreter won Russia’s National Bestseller Prize and sold over 2 million copies. In 2011 the book was published by Overlook Press translated into English by Arch Tait.

9 September, 2011
Daniel Stein, Interpreter by Ludmila Ulitskaya, trans. Arch Tait

Russian saga with spirits

By Anna Aslanyan

Varieties of religious experience is Ludmila Ulitskaya's theme in Daniel Stein, Interpreter, in which the Russian writer tells the story of a man who devotes himself to God after surviving the horrors of Nazism. The hero is a Polish Jew who comes of age at the beginning of the Second World War, manages to hide his origins and, working as an interpreter for the Gestapo, saves many lives by risking his own. - Read more

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/

March 15, 2012
The incredible life of a Polish Jew

By Phoebe Taplin

Lyudmila Ulitskaya is used to crowds. One of Russia’s bestselling authors, she is also internationally known as a dramatist and opposition figure. Her staged readings of the letters she exchanged with her imprisoned muse, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, also created a sensation – at least among a certain Russia-watching elite. Read more

Source: http://rbth.ru