Sophie Brody Award

The Sophie Brody Award is an annual award of the American Library Association, administered by the Reference and User Services Association RUSA. It is given for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature, for works published the previous year, in the US.

The award is named after Sophie Brody and was established by her husband, Arthur Brody, and the Brodart Foundation.

Awards and honourable mentions

• 2017: Michael Chabon, Moonglow: A Novel. Harper.

  Honourable mentions: Ezra Glinter, Have I got a Story For You: More than a Century of Fiction from the Forward, Norton

  Helen Maryles Shankman, In the Land of Armadillos, Scribner

  Matti Friedman, Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story, Algonquin

  Abraham Karpinowitz, Vilna My Vilna, Syracuse University Press

• 2016: Jim Shepard, The Book of Aron: A Novel, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House

  Honourable mentions: Michal Lemberger, After Abel and Other Stories, Prospect Park Books

  Primo Levi, The Complete Works of Primo Levi, Liveright

  Sasha Abramsky, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, The New York Review of Books

  Dan Ephron, Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel, W.W. Norton

• 2015: Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life, HarperCollins

  Honourable mentions: Stuart Rojstaczer, The Mathematician’s Shiva, Penguin

  Ruchama King Feuerman, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist, New York Review of Books

• 2014: Yossi Klein Halevi, Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, HarperCollins

  Honourable mentions: Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, Spiegel & Grau

  Jeremy Dauber, The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye, Schocken Books

• 2013: Matti Friedman, The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible, Algonquin Books

  Honourable mentions: Anouk Markovits, I Am Forbidden, Hogarth Press

  Nathan Englander, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Alfred A. Knopf

  Herman Wouk, The Lawgiver.

• 2012: Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: the Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, Schocken Books

  Honourable mentions: Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: the Biography, Alfred A. Knopf

  Art Spiegelman, MetaMaus, Pantheon Books

  Erika Dreifus, Quiet Americans: Stories, Last Light Studio Books

• 2011: Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time, Random House

  Honourable mentions: Eshkol Nevo, Homesick, Dalkey Archive Press

• 2010: Jonathon Keats, The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six, Random House

  Honourable mentions: Thomas Buergenthal, Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy, Little Brown

  Melvin Konner, The Jewish Body, Schocken Books

  Clara Kramer and Stephen Gantz, Clara’s War: One Girl’s Story of Survival, Ecco Press

• 2009: Peter Manseau, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, Free Press

  Honourable mentions: Ron Leshem, Beaufort, Delacorte Press

  A.B. Yehoshua, Friendly Fire (2008 book)

  Arie Kaplan, From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books, Jewish Publication Society

• 2008: Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases, Alfred A. Knopf

  Honourable mentions: Shalom Auslander, Foreskin’s Lament: A Memoir, Riverhead Books

  Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story, W. W. Norton & Company

  Joyce Antler, You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother, Oxford University Press

• 2007: Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, HarperCollins

  Honourable mentions: Dara Horn, The World to Come, W. W. Norton & Company

  Sandy Tolan, The LemonTree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, Bloomsbury; and Markus Zusak, The Book Thief, Alfred A. Knopf

• 2006: Avner Mandelman, Talking to the Enemy, Seven Stories Press

  Honourable mentions: Michael Wex, Born to Kvetch, St. Martin's Press

  Michael Lavigne, Not Me, Random House

  Tom Reiss, The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life, Random House

See also

• Sophie Brody

External links

• ALA award page
• 2014 "Like Dreamers" press release