TORONTO (JTA) — Toronto author Joseph Kertes has won the 59th annual National Jewish Book Award for Fiction for his novel, "Gratitude."
Kertes’ Holocaust-themed novel, which was first published in Canada in 2008, is one of 18 books in various categories recognized by the awards overseen by the Jewish Book Council in New York City.
The book is set in German-occupied Hungary during the final months of World War II. Kertes, a native of Hungary, escaped with his family to Canada after the 1956 revolution.
Other National Jewish Book Award winners include Hasia Diner, author of "We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962" (New York University Press), the American Jewish Studies’ Celebrate 350 Award; Melvin Urofsky, the Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award for "Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon Books); Daniel Gordis, for "Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End" (John Wiley & Sons), the Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Award.
Ellen Frankel and Avi Katz of the Jewish Publication Society won the Louis Posner Memorial Award in Illustrated Children’s Books for the JPS Illustrated Children’s Bible.
Sir Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of England, won the Dorot Foundation Award in memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson in Modern Jewish Thought & Experience for his "Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible, Genesis: The Beginnings" (Koren Publishers).
The winners will be honored March 9 in New York City.
