The Peace Process: A Novella and Stories
<DIV><B>A brilliant new collection from one of American literature’s most original and hilarious purveyors of dark comedy</B><BR /><BR /> Silenced by the horrors of Nazi Germany, a Jewish satirist is inspired to write again by his biggest fan: Joseph Goebbels. A retired English teacher dies on the operating table and wakes up to an afterlife in which literature does not exist; he can claim any masterpiece as his own, from <I>The Catcher in the Rye</I> to <I>Crime and Punishment</I>—if only he can remember what actually happens in those stories. On his first trip to the Holy Land, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker reluctantly agrees to help a young Israeli Arab escape to New York, only to watch in dismay as the upstart lands a buxom, Yiddish-speaking girlfriend and a monster movie deal.<BR />  <BR /> Mario Puzo once said that the world of Bruce Jay Friedman’s short fiction is “like a <I>Twilight Zone </I>with Charlie Chaplin.†Ironic, clever, perceptive, and hysterical,<I> The Peace Process</I> is vintage Friedman—fourteen finely crafted tales that take dead aim at the sweet spot between pleasure and pain.</DIV>