Professor Norman Rosenfeld, a cultural historian at a small
Canadian university, has almost finished his new and controversial
book about Israel and the Jewish people. Then, he learns that his
daughter, on a one-year study program at an Israeli university, has
been injured in a terrorist attack. Rosenfeld, a widower, rushes to
Israel, along with his father, an elderly Holocaust survivor, named
"Lucky". While in Israel visiting his injured daughter, at the
height of the "Second Intifada", Rosenfeld, an Orthodox Jew, meets
and falls in love with a secular Israeli woman.
Chapters of the Professor's book on Israel and the Jewish people
are interspersed among the events of the novel. The dramatic events
and difficulties of Rosenfeld's life mirror catastrophic events in
the life of the Jewish people. His journey to overcome these
catastrophes is at the core of The Second Catastrophe.
"The Second Catastrophe ... effectively merges contemporary
historical writing and narrative fiction in a creative and
compelling manner ... No-one who reads The Second Catastrophe can
leave unaffected or uninformed" - Professor Dennis Stoutenburg
Howard Rotberg is a Canadian author who has written mainly for
newspapers and magazines. He has degrees in both History and Law
from the University of Toronto.
Mantua Books, a publisher in Toronto, Canada, is pleased to
publish The Second Catastrophe as the first volume in its New
Judaica series.