From the author of Confessions of the Fox comes a novel in which a yenta on her deathbed begins to look back at all her failures—including her child.
In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg - old world yenta, committed homophobe, accomplished jazzercizer - is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. Forget about her late husband, her career as the receptionist for an Upper East Side plastic surgeon, and her failed aspirations to be an actress. What she really wants to talk about are her unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Jewish diaspora, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara's theories get wilder, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates once again.
Part novel, part someone's mother's unauthorized memoir, this novel is a timely exploration of sexuality, intergenerational conflict, and who gets to have an intellectual life.
“Jordy Rosenberg’s exuberant, exasperating narrator unleashes the full, hilarious, and ultimately revealing power of the rant. Night Night Fawn is a hugely enjoyable novel, devious and rich in irony.”—Sofia Samatar, British Fantasy Award-winning author of The White Mosque
“A novel as wickedly funny as it is smart. I have simply never read anything like it—exactly the queer, marxist, yenta-narrated tour de force that we need right now, an instant classic.”—Melissa Febos, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Body Work
Jordy Rosenberg is the author of the novel Confessions of the Fox, which was a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, and longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award, and named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, HuffPost, Buzzfeed, Kirkus Reviews, LitHub, Electric Literature, and others. Jordy’s work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from The Lannan Foundation, The Banff Centre, The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, and the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies. He is a professor in the Department of English and Associated MFA Faculty in the Program for Poets and Writers at The University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
View titles by Jordy Rosenberg
From the author of Confessions of the Fox comes a novel in which a yenta on her deathbed begins to look back at all her failures—including her child.
In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg - old world yenta, committed homophobe, accomplished jazzercizer - is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. Forget about her late husband, her career as the receptionist for an Upper East Side plastic surgeon, and her failed aspirations to be an actress. What she really wants to talk about are her unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Jewish diaspora, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara's theories get wilder, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates once again.
Part novel, part someone's mother's unauthorized memoir, this novel is a timely exploration of sexuality, intergenerational conflict, and who gets to have an intellectual life.
Praise
“Jordy Rosenberg’s exuberant, exasperating narrator unleashes the full, hilarious, and ultimately revealing power of the rant. Night Night Fawn is a hugely enjoyable novel, devious and rich in irony.”—Sofia Samatar, British Fantasy Award-winning author of The White Mosque
“A novel as wickedly funny as it is smart. I have simply never read anything like it—exactly the queer, marxist, yenta-narrated tour de force that we need right now, an instant classic.”—Melissa Febos, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Body Work
Jordy Rosenberg is the author of the novel Confessions of the Fox, which was a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, and longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award, and named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, HuffPost, Buzzfeed, Kirkus Reviews, LitHub, Electric Literature, and others. Jordy’s work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from The Lannan Foundation, The Banff Centre, The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation, the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University, and the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies. He is a professor in the Department of English and Associated MFA Faculty in the Program for Poets and Writers at The University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
View titles by Jordy Rosenberg
