Edward Lewis Wallant

Edward Lewis Wallant (born October 19, 1926 in New Haven , Connecticut , † December 5, 1962 in New York City ) was an American writer .

Life

Wallant served in the Navy during World War II . After completing his military service, he moved to New York, where he studied at the Pratt Institute and the New School for Social Research, and in the following years worked as an art director in the advertising industry.

His literary career spanned only a short period from the age of 30 until his untimely death, and during his lifetime he published no more than two novels . The Early Completed Often chose Jewish themes The Human Season (1960) (story of a Jewish plumber) and The Pawnbroker (1961) (story of a Jewish pawnbroker). For his first novel he received the Harry and Ethel Daroff Memorial Fiction Award in the year of publication ; this literary award was rededicated after Wallant's death and is now called the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American Fiction in his honor .

Two other novels appeared posthumously, namely The Tenants of Moonbloom (1963; German: Mr Moonbloom , Berlin 2012, tr .: Barbara Schaden) and The Children at the Gate (1964). Despite this limited work, Wallant is compared in terms of importance to other, better-known Jewish-American authors of the post-war generation, for example Philip Roth , Saul Bellow or Norman Mailer . In a review of the Tenants on August 16, 1963, the reviewer of Time magazine draws parallels with the work of the pioneer of postmodern American literature, Nathanael West, who also died early .

Edward Lewis Wallant died of an aneurysm at the age of 36 . Two years after his death, The Pawnbroker was directed by Sidney Lumet and Rod Steiger received an Oscar nomination in 1965 for his portrayal of the main character Sol Nazerman . The pawnbroker , as the German title is, is considered to be the first American film that tries to portray the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps .

Works (in German translation)

Mr. Moonbloom . Novel. From the English by Barbara Schaden, with a foreword by Dave Eggers . Berlin Verlag , Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8270-0974-6 .
The pawnbroker . Novel. From the English by Barbara Schaden. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-8270-1183-1 .

literature

Dave Eggers : Foreword to The Tenants of Moonbloom . New York Review, New York 2003, ISBN 1-59017-070-9

Individual evidence

↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 845.

personal data
SURNAME	Wallant, Edward Lewis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American writer
DATE OF BIRTH	October 19, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH	New Haven (Connecticut)
DATE OF DEATH	5th December 1962
Place of death	New York City

[1] John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 845.