My Name is Asher Lev

Since its original publication in 1972, this stirring, luminously rendered novel that lets us into a little-known and less understood world has been recognized as a modern classic. Its protagonist is Asher Lev, a boy raised in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, who at an early age discovers a compulsive need to draw and paint the world around him. As he grows up, Asher's gift will become increasingly evident to others even as it places him at odds with his parents and teachers. For a Jew is supposed to serve the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe, while an artist is responsible only to his imagination. In depicting Asher's struggle to reconcile these two identities, My Name Is Asher Lev presents a heartbreaking and exultant vision of what it means to be an artist.