Nothing Vast - by Moshe Zvi Marvit (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A sweeping multigenerational tale complicates traditional narratives as it follows two families--one Moroccan, one Polish--filled with Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, and reactionaries.

Spanning from 1932 to 1973, Nothing Vast delves deeply into the circumstances and concerns of Jews in cities across the globe--in Poland, France, Morocco, and the United States--as well as in Israel. Giving voice to characters male and female, young and old, Moshe Zvi Marvit braids together stories of migration and struggle, of custom and superstition, of long-held secrets and lies. This beautifully crafted novel follows a survivor of sexual assault, a member of the French resistance, a dream interpreter, a petty criminal, and a venerated rabbi.

Based on the experiences and traditions of the author's own half-Arab Jewish family, the book is rife with historical and cultural detail and with the intricacies of faith and identity, both personal and national. At the center of the novel is Israel itself--a place existing first in the collective imagination, then in reality as Marvit slips into nonfiction to document the establishment of the country and the reactions to its birth. The characters' experiences upon arrival in their new nation are vastly different: one family is given a large orange grove upon which to establish a Yeshiva, while the other, not accorded the same privileges, lives beneath notice. The story takes yet another twist when, years later, a grandchild of one of the founding rabbis, seeking answers, discovers the origin of his family's land.

Visceral, intellectual, and searching, Nothing Vast is nothing short of a virtuosic debut.

Review Quotes

"One of the chief pleasures of Moshe Zvi Marvit's sweeping family saga Nothing Vast is the way it transports you to places and times that feel soothingly distant from here and now. . . . The characters are at once ordinary and remarkable; to many readers, they will be eerily familiar. Being pulled into their stories is startling and wondrous, like being visited by a long-lost relative. . . . Marvit resists the temptation to lionize his forebears, even in fiction. His characters are complex but flawed, and he portrays them critically, with admiration and frustration."--Raina Lipsitz "The Metropolitan Review"

"This is a genuine Jewish narrative--historically, biographically and personally. Marvit's family is dispersed from Morocco to Brooklyn plus places elsewhere and beyond. Nationalism is kept to a minimum, and all that matters is how they live and stay in touch and what they say (sometimes in Yiddish) to one another. By the time you finish this book, you feel like one of the family."-- "Samuel Hazo"

"Marvit's nov­el explores themes of truth and jus­tice with nuance and pre­ci­sion. Thought­ful, intri­cate, and ambi­tious, Noth­ing Vast invites read­ers to con­sid­er his­to­ry and its gen­er­a­tional rip­ple effect."-- "Jewish Book Council"

"Nothing Vast is a rich, intelligent and lucid multigenerational narrative, spanning contexts and continents, weaving archival work with fiction, intertwining the catastrophic histories that make up the stories of nations with the small vicissitudes and moments of mercy that undergird individual lives. This book offers a compelling depiction of trauma, ideological fervor, dispossession and buried memories, both individual and collective; of the siren's call of violent nationalism, which ultimately offers a false and hollow facsimile of redemption; and of the impact of all of this on the human heart, and soul."-- "Moriel Rothman-Zecher, author of "Before All the World" and "Sadness Is a White Bird""

"A beautifully written novel about Zionism as an idea, Israel as a reality, and how the distance between the two shapes Jewish lives."-- "Peter Beinart, author of "The Crisis of Zionism""

"Like a latter-day Joseph Roth, Marvit writes with dizzying breadth and ambition, chasing ghosts and djinns and the ordinary mysteries of families living through less-than-ordinary times. Nothing Vast is a story about stories--remembered, forgotten, invented, and erased--that plunges into the void at the center of Zionist myth and identity. This is a brave, tender, thoughtful book."-- "Ben Ehrenreich, author of "The Way to the Spring""

About the Author

Moshe Zvi Marvit's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, the New Republic, Dissent Magazine, In These Times, the American Prospect, the Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Marvit lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.