JUDENSTAAT

An alternate history thriller about a woman stalking her husband’s assassin in the Jewish homeland carved out of Germany in 1948.

On April 4th, 1948 the sovereign state of Judenstaat was created in the territory of Saxony, bordering Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Forty years later, Jewish historian Judit Klemmer is making a documentary portraying Judenstaat's history from the time of its founding to the present. She is haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, Hans, a Saxon, shot by a sniper as he conducted the National Symphony. With the grief always fresh, Judit lives a half-life, until confronted by a mysterious, flesh-and-blood ghost from her past who leaves her controversial footage on one of Judenstaat's founding fathers--and a note: "They lied about the murder." Judit's research into the footage, and what really happened to Hans, embroils her in controversy and conspiracy, collective memory and national amnesia, and answers far more horrific than she imagined. The novel considers: What if a Jewish state were a direct answer to the Holocaust? What if the Soviet Union “gave” the Jews Saxony? What does it mean to base a national history on cataclysmic loss? The widow is piecing together a history of her country for a 40th anniversary documentary, and Judenstaat is changing from a socialist republic to a neoliberal center for banking and “free trade.” A wall protects the country from German fascists. The year is 1988. That wall is about to fall. Owing a debt to Phillip K. Dick and George Orwell, JUDENSTAAT considers how history gets rewritten to suit the needs of the present and how we face the ghosts of the past. Simone Zelitch is the author of three prior novels, including Louisa which won the Goldberg Prize for Emerging Jewish Fiction. her work has been featured on NPR and recent honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant.