Kaddish Poznan chips the names off gravestones for a living, removing traces of disreputable ancestors for their more respectable kin. His wife Lillian works in insurance, earning money when people live longer than they fear. Set in a tumultuous Buenos Aires on the cusp of a military coup, the couple’s own tumultuous relationship is held together by their role as parents dedicated to a teenage son.
As Argentina’s Dirty War unfolds around them, and innocents begin to disappear, the Poznan family’s sometimes hilarious misadventures are soon replaced by something much darker. A visit to the dreaded Ministry of Special Cases is only the start of Englander’s stunning vision of a nation in the hold of corruption and torture, a place where absurdity, despair and hope are the end products of a bureaucracy run out of control.

Nathan Englander’s collection of stories, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, was met with extraordinary acclaim, became an international bestseller, and won several awards. The Ministry of Special Cases, his first novel, has been ten years in the making, and is as ambitious as it is mesmerizing.