{"product_id":"place-envy-essays-in-search-of-orientation-9780814259665","title":"Place Envy: Essays in Search of Orientation","description":"Growing up in places where his family had no past, and met mostly by silence from his Holocaust-refugee grandparents, Michael Lowenthal longed to be from somewhere. Then he realized he was gay and felt displaced from his own displaced family. \u003ci\u003ePlace Envy\u003c\/i\u003e--his first book of essays after five acclaimed books of fiction--chronicles his quest for orientation in the world: as an agnostic Jew, as a queer traveler and lover, and as a writer who can tell or twist the truth. Yearning for a queer lineage, he obsesses about an uncle who perished at Bergen-Belsen but then finds, in his grandmother's German hometown, a more surprising legacy. He lives with a Pennsylvania Amish family; accompanies blind gay men on a Mexican cruise; plays jazz with Sun Ra, the Afrofuturist who claimed to hail from Saturn; and pursues a clarifying love affair in Brazil. Collectively, these essays recount Lowenthal's many journeys of dislocation and relocation: to foreign countries and subcultures and to the riskiest shores of family and self.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMichael Lowenthal is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eThe Same Embrace, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eAvoidance, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eCharity Girl, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Paternity Test\u003c\/i\u003e and of the short story collection \u003ci\u003eSex with Strangers.\u003c\/i\u003e His writing has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Magazine, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eOut, \u003c\/i\u003e and many other publications. His stories have been widely anthologized\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Mad Creek Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51985630396690,"sku":"9780814259665","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_14f88d41-d9c8-43ad-b131-6555c2a1f0fd.jpg?v=1769542072","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/place-envy-essays-in-search-of-orientation-9780814259665","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}