Kindle
$5.99
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
$16.85
Paperback
$14.15
Kindle Price: $5.99

Save $11.01 (65%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Audiobook Price: $13.78

Save: $6.29 (46%)

Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs

Follow the author

Shalom Auslander
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Shalom Auslander (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 578 ratings
Best Price in 30 Days
Best Price in 30 Days means that the current price is lower than, or equal to, the lowest price this item sold for on Amazon.com in the past 30 days.
See all formats and editions
A New York Times Notable Book 2012

The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: no one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there.

To begin again. To start anew. But it isn’t quite working out that way for Kugel…

His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won’t stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one Kugel bought, and when, one night, he discovers history—a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history—hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse.

Hope: A Tragedy is a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    302 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    Not Enabled
  4. Publisher
    Riverhead Books
  5. Publication date
    January 12, 2012
  6. File size
    325 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Not Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Not Enabled
  10. See all details
Next page
Add a debit or credit card to save time when you check out
Convenient and secure with 2 clicks. Add your card

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A virtuoso humorist, and a brave one: beware Shalom Auslander; he will make you laugh until your heart breaks.” – New York Times Book Review

“A caustic comic tour de force.” – NPR

“Poisonously funny…. Like an unintentional bark of laughter at a funeral.” – Entertainment Weekly

“Staggeringly nervy… Other fiction writers have gotten this fresh with Anne Frank. But they don’t get much funnier… [Auslander] is an absurdist with a deep sense of gravitas… It’s a tall order for Mr. Auslander to raise an essentially comic novel to this level of moral contemplation. Yet Hope: A Tragedy succeeds shockingly well.”  – New York Times

“Shalom Auslander writes like some contemporary comedic Jeremiah, thundering warnings of disaster and retribution. What makes him so terrifyingly funny is that he isn’t joking.” — Howard Jacobson, author of The Finkler Question and winner of the Man Booker Prize

“A wonderful, twisted, transgressive, heartbreaking, true, and hugely funny book. It will make very many people very angry. It will also make very many people very happy.” — A. L. Kennedy, author of Day

“Can the darkest events of the twentieth century and of all human history be used to show the folly of hope? And can the result be so funny that you burst out laughing again and again? If you doubt this is possible, read Hope: A Tragedy. You won’t regret it.” — John Gray, author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

 


About the Author

Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Tablet, The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR's This American Life. Auslander is the author of the short story collection Beware of God and the memoir Foreskin's Lament. He lives in New York City. To learn more about Shalom Auslander, please visit www.shalomauslander.com.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005GSZZ88
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books (January 12, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 12, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 325 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 302 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 578 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Shalom Auslander

Shalom Auslander

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
3.6 out of 5
578 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Eric Selby
5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: This Is a Side-Splitter--SOOO Funny
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2012
Verified Purchase
Warning: This Novel May Split Your Sides!

This probably is the funniest novel I have ever read--and I am an old guy who has spent his life reading and reading and reading.

Okay, let me give you a taste of this book, not in my words but in Shalom Auslander's.

This from page three: Solomon Kugel was lying in bed, thinking about suffocating to death in a house fire, because he was an optimist.

When a novel begins like this, you know you are in for a wonderful romp with a really funny Jew! Yes, there actually are humorous Jews!

The Kugels are 40-year-old Solomon, his wife Bree, their young son, Jonah. Oh, yes, of course, Solomon's mother. What is a household without a old Jewish mother, right?

Okay, here's another taste, this right after Solomon sees his new-born son: Jonah was beautiful and innocent and pure, so Kugel felt terrible guilt for bringing him into this world. To father this child was a horribly selfish act, a felony, in fact--everyone here in this world is a kidnap victim from some better place, or from no place at all, and Jonah had been dragged here, by Kugel and Bree, against his will, without provocation, without consent, without any good goddamned reason whatsoever beyond their own selfish desires.

Are you laughing yet?

I will offer one more. But let me warn you that this is side-splitingly funny, page after page after page.

Mother was a hoarder.
She kept everything.
Ever since the war...she packed for the move to Kugel's new home...
Most of Kugel's boxes were filled with books. Science, philosophy, art, literature; the philosophy of science, the science of literature, the art of philosophy, the science of art, books about other books and the books about those books about other books; Gogol on Pushkin, Nabokov on Gogol, Wilson on Nabokov on Gogol. Joyce on The Odyssey, Beckett on Joyce, everyone on Beckett. Kugel had grown weary of them, ashamed of them, in fact--of the hope he had placed in them, of the answers he had sought from them--but he still couldn't bring himself to throw them away, like old medicine bottles full of remedies that never worked but that you didn't dare throw away on the off chance they would someday do what they promised, that you'd be stricken by chance with the one disease only they could cure, two weeks after they'd been pulled off the market. Kugel had taken a week's leave from work after moving in, and spent his days heaving box after box up into the attic when he would have rather thrown them allin the trash. They say you can't take it with you, but good luck trying to leave it behind.

Some people gave it away. Shame on them! I won't tell you exactly who. But Kugel finds an unwanted and uninvited guest in his farmhouse attic, a certain someone who is used to living in an attic. And a certain someone who is not dead after all, a certain someone who is well known for a certain diary she wrote. And is not a happy--or attractive--old lady, very busy writing a novel because she does not want to be known for having written just that one book and at such a young age.
12 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Gadi Wolfsfeld, Author
4.0 out of 5 stars Well Done But Often Repetitive
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2012
Verified Purchase
Auslander has one of the sickest senses of humor I have ever encountered. I first discovered him when listening to the Podcast the Moth where people tell 15 minute personal stories without any notes. Some of these stories are brilliant and Auslander's tale was one of those. He told a hilarious story entitled the "Death Camp Blues" about his experience visiting a death camp in Germany. I know that sounds offensive, and there are certainly many people that will be turned off by this type of material, but I and many others are apparently sick enough to enjoy it.

This book is similar. The main character, Solomon Kugel, has just moved into a new house with his wife and young son and his annoying mother who the doctors have "promised" will die any time now. His mother is obsessed with the holocaust and continually tries to tell everybody how much she suffered (even though she was really in the states at the time). Kugel is himself fixated on death, in finding an attic to hide in when "they" come to get the Jews, and in finding the perfect last words to say before he dies. Some of the last words he quotes from historical figures are quite funny. I don't want to spoil anything but the major twist concerns him finding an extremely surprising person living in his attic.

The book is often funny but I believe that Auslander tells the same handful of jokes too often. It's like a SNL skit that gets turned into a full length movie. This plot was reasonable but did exactly zip along. I noted that he also has a collection of short stories that might be worth trying. I recommend this book but with reservations.

Here's two bits from the book that give you the idea:

Why did the chicken cross the road? Professor Jove had asked him. I don't know, said Kugel. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he was a schmuck, said Professor Jove. I don't get it, said Kugel. The chicken crossed the road, said Professor Jove, for the same reason we all cross roads--because he thought that there might be something better on the other side. Tell me, Mr. Chicken: there are no wars on the other side of the road? There is no suffering, no divorce, no failure? No hunger, no disease, no tears, no pain? They don't commit genocide on that side of the road, Mr. Chicken? On the other side of the road parents don't bury their children, sons and daughters always get the love they need, men and women don't grow old and bitter and die of regret?

Two and a half thousand years later, it was becoming undeniably apparent that an unexamined life is the only one worth living. Examined lives tended to end hanging by the neck in the shower. Life examiners tended to go out sucking on the barrel of a shotgun.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Un livre déprimant au plus haut point
Reviewed in France on November 23, 2016
Verified Purchase
Je mets deux étoiles car j'ai trouvé l'idée bonne mais oh! la déprime ! et quand ce n'est pas déprimant, c'est ennuyeux ... je suis vraiment déçue car les critiques littéraires ont étaient très positif.
One person found this helpful
 Report
Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Beware of the seller BOOK LAB!
Reviewed in India on March 10, 2016
Verified Purchase
I ordered 12 different books simultaneously, including this one, from the seller BOOK LAB, and at least half of them seems to be the pirated copies. I am quite disappointed.
Report
Bex Quebex
4.0 out of 5 stars An unpredictable, hysterical, tragicomic romp of a novel ...
Reviewed in Canada on July 6, 2014
Verified Purchase
An unpredictable, hysterical, tragicomic romp of a novel with a most antipathetic
protagonist who finds Anne Frank hiding in his attic & against all odds attempts to keep her alive until she is able to complete her book!
Report
Isabel Barbesky
5.0 out of 5 stars Laughed ‘til I plotzed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 22, 2014
Verified Purchase
Goldstein is standing on the street corner.
A man he doesn’t know comes up to him.
“You Goldstein?” the man asks.
Goldstein looks at the man he doesn’t know.
“Not necessarily,” Goldstein replies.

If you get this, you will love Hope. A Tragedy.
You may even love it if you don’t get it.
But I wouldn’t put much money on it.

After a recent diet of ‘serious’ books, this one is a welcome relief.
Lots of painfully hilarious profound observations.
Up--to-date Borsht Belt funny.
Even the hero’s name ‘Kugel’ is perfect.
Takes the safe bad taste of The Producers to a wonderful new low.
Laughed ‘til I plotzed.
2 people found this helpful
 Report
Christiane
5.0 out of 5 stars Totally original
Reviewed in Germany on May 14, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is probably one of those books you either love or hate.

I haven't been as excited about any book in years as I have been about this one. It is wholly original, funny, sad, weird, moving - I know that for me it will be a very hard act to follow.
Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report