The Inferno
In 2002, a suitcase full of glass plate negative dating back to the 1920s and 30s is found, stuffed under a bed in Jerusalem. The only clues to the photographer's identity are the dates given to the photos, and their bizarre titles. With the help of a 100-year-old Italian Jesuit, the author unravels the mystery of the photographer, and discovers an explosive tale of betrayal, murder, and madness.

It is during this sojourn that Dr. Stolz establishes a deep connection with the stigmatic and clairvoyant Therese Neuman, and with her unlikely disciple, the journalist Fritz Gerlich. He vows to help in their mission to stop Hitler. But three years later, Gerlich is murdered by Heydrich’s men, and the stigmatist’s visions turn darker, more violent. Reeling from shock - and an abysmal sense of failure - Stolz meets a woman who helps him understand the miracle of empathy in the face of horror. It is the Jewish philosopher Edith Stein.

Back in Palestine, his sanity increasingly put to question by the patriarch, Dr. Stolz uses his camera to explore the realities of guilt, pain, and redemption. The outbreak of World War II, Edith Stein's murder at Auschwitz, and civil war in Palestine force him to confront himself, and his faith, in a new way. He devotes his life to a bitter – and behind-the-scenes – struggle against a deadly 2,000-year-old theological prejudice.

Photographic Collection

Biography

I’m Tony David. Since getting my PhD at the University of Chicago in 2000 I’ve been working as a scholar and writer, mostly in the US, Germany, and the Middle East. Presently I am a professor of history at the Bard Honors College at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem. Over the years of writing and teaching I’ve encountered some extraordinary people. My most recent book, on an American-Israeli arms smuggler and dealer, already out in Hebrew, will appear with Bantam Books in early 2010. I’m now finishing up a biography of Yossi Vardi, a man frequently called the godfather of Israeli high tech. The Inferno is the product of a chance discovery in Jerusalem, followed by many long hours spent with the greatest storyteller I’ve ever met.

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A Washington Post Best Foreign Affairs Books of 2007

“One of the best personal accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever written."
--ETHAN BRONNER, New York Times

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"A fascinating biography of a remarkable German-Jewish tycoon.”
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Awarded the Harvard Belknap prize.
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The Life in Letters a finalist in the Koret Jewish Book Award in the Biography, Autobiography and Literary Studies Category, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize 2003.

"Scholem's uncompromising voice that gives this volume its unified force and striking crescendos.”
--Cynthia Ozick, New Yorker
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"The Sniper is a gripping drama about the relationship between an Israeli military sniper and a Moroccan journalist."
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