At the center of A Blessing on the Moon is Chaim Skibelski. Death is merely the beginning of Chaim’s troubles. In the opening pages, he is shot along with the other Jews of his small Polish village. But instead of resting peacefully in the World to Come, Chaim, for reasons unclear to him, is left to wander the earth, accompanied by his rabbi, who has taken the form of a talking crow. Chaim’s afterlife journey is filled with extraordinary encounters whose consequences are far greater than he realizes. Not since Art Spiegelman’s Maus has a work so powerfully evoked one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century with such daring originality.

An epic and audacious historical novel set in turn-of-the century Vienna and Paris that crosses the lines between characters both real (Sigmund Freud, Emma Eckstein, L. L. Zamenhof, and others) and imaginary (including protagonist Dr. Sammelsohn). It’s an entertaining picaresque novel that seamlessly weaves together fifty years of Jewish tradition, history, and folklore along with a wholly original take on Freud, the Esperantists, and life in the Warsaw ghetto.