Podcast appearances and mentions of michael david lukas

Michael David Lukas speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his essay “More to the Story,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. Michael talks about his writing process for the essay, which began when a dark family mystery moved him to research a side of his family he'd never learned much about. He also discusses the revision stages of the piece, which included adding in details of the other side of the family—his mother's parents—who were Holocaust survivors. We also talk about his time as a nightshift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and the new novel project he's working on now. Michael David Lukas is the author of the international bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction in 2018, the Sami Rohr Prize, and France's best foreign novel prize. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University. ­­Read “More to the Story” in The Common at thecommononline.org/more-to-the-story. Learn more about Michael and his work at michaeldavidlukas.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming April 1, 2025 from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Michael David Lukas speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his essay “More to the Story,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. Michael talks about his writing process for the essay, which began when a dark family mystery moved him to research a side of his family he'd never learned much about. He also discusses the revision stages of the piece, which included adding in details of the other side of the family—his mother's parents—who were Holocaust survivors. We also talk about his time as a nightshift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and the new novel project he's working on now. Michael David Lukas is the author of the international bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction in 2018, the Sami Rohr Prize, and France's best foreign novel prize. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University. ­­Read “More to the Story” in The Common at thecommononline.org/more-to-the-story. Learn more about Michael and his work at michaeldavidlukas.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming April 1, 2025 from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Michael David Lukas speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his essay “More to the Story,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. Michael talks about his writing process for the essay, which began when a dark family mystery moved him to research a side of his family he'd never learned much about. He also discusses the revision stages of the piece, which included adding in details of the other side of the family—his mother's parents—who were Holocaust survivors. We also talk about his time as a nightshift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and the new novel project he's working on now. Michael David Lukas is the author of the international bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. His second novel, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction in 2018, the Sami Rohr Prize, and France's best foreign novel prize. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University. ­­Read “More to the Story” in The Common at thecommononline.org/more-to-the-story. Learn more about Michael and his work at michaeldavidlukas.com. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is forthcoming April 1, 2025 from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Lloyd as he interviews author Michael David Lukas! Michael David Lukas is a best-selling author of 2 books. His 1st book, Oracle of Stamboul, has been translated into 12 languages! His second book, The Last watchman of Old Cairo, has won several awards. Michael teaches creative writing at San Francisco State. We are all waiting for book #3! ------------

It's Hanukkah! Chanukah! Hannukkahh! That can only mean one thing - it's time for us to be told, on the pages of national newspapers, what the meaning of Chanukah is. So...what is it? Is it about the victory of nationalism over assimilation? Is it about finding light in the darkness? Something else entirely? In this week's episode, Uri and Rivky definitively come up with an answer. You're welcome. Ari Lamm: https://nypost.com/2020/12/09/why-the-cultural-elite-truly-despises-hanukkah/Sarah Prager: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/parenting/hanukkah-family.htmlSarah Prager backlash: https://jewishjournal.com/news/325688/nyt-criticized-for-running-saying-goodbye-to-hanukkah-op-ed/Michael David Lukas: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/01/opinion/sunday/the-hypocrisy-of-hanukkah.htmlAvi Shafran: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/opinion/hanukkah-history-materialism.html

This week, author Gila Green reprises her role as co-host to discuss The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas. Green is the author of several novels. Her most recent, No Entry, is a young adult novel following the trials of 17-year-old Yael Amar as she explores an elephant conservation program in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. No Entry is available now wherever books are sold. The Last Watchman of Old Cairo was published on March 13, 2018 by Spiegel & Grau. In his second novel, Lukas attempts to tell three thrilling stories that span hundreds of years and converge on the magical city of Cairo, Egypt. The novel’s primary protagonist is Joseph al-Raqb, a literature student at Berkley with a Jewish-Egyptian mother who brought him to America as a child and a Muslim-Egyptian father who still lives and works in the city of Cairo. After Joseph’s father dies and leaves him a mystery gift, Joseph must return to Cairo and discover his father’s final wishes. Almost a hundred years earlier, two Christian sisters from England return to Cairo for another archeological adventure to undercover the rumored and historic Ezra Scroll, a perfect iteration of the Torah that has been lost for thousands of years. The sisters have journeyed far in hopes that the scroll might reside in the attic of the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, one of the last synagogues in the city. Lukas brings his readers even further back in time to follow the exploits of Ali, Joseph’s ancestor from nearly a thousand years ago, whose curious duties as a Muslim night watchman of the Ibn Ezra Synagogue leads to generations of service to one of the strongest Jewish communities in Cairo. Lukas undertakes a daunting task in his sophomore work, continually working out his own personal conflicts between his Jewish and Muslim backgrounds through his main characters. His ability to bring such a historic and iconic city out of the pages and into the readers imagination is nothing short of stunning and succeeds in bringing this complex, multi-faceted, and tumultuous city to life. Although some of his plots fall short over such an expansive narrative, Lukas undoubtedly proves his ability to weave an intriguing and evocative story that sticks with the reader for quite some time. Next read(s): Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway and Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami.   

Host Dave Pezza is joined by Phoef Sutton, co-host of Film Freaks Forever!, to discuss The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. They also chat about the two film adaptations of the novel, the 1999 American film of the same name, as well as a 1960 French adaptation called “Purple Noon.” Next read: The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas (with guest host Gila Green).

“The Last Watchman of Old Cairo” centers on a synagogue guarded by men of Muslim faith. The "watchmen" protect magical, ancient texts like the Ezra Scroll, which has such strong energy, it emits a shimmering vibration, causing everything around it to glow. Michael David Lukas' novel bounces between three eras. Some of the characters are in Egypt now. Others knew Moses. A third group, from the 1800s, could have come right out of an Agatha Christie mystery. Lukas brilliantly weaves together the three storylines and the connection of each one to the sacred texts. He sat down with CapRadio's Donna Apidone to talk about what inspired him to write this book. Interview Highlights Talking about Cairo and the diversity and the many facets of religion and culture in that city, did you know all of that in advance or did you have to dig in and do some research to write this? A little bit of both. I first experienced Cairo when I was studying abroad in 2000. I was a junior in college and had been studying Arabic a little bit. I had lived in the Middle East, in Israel before, but I had never lived in the Arab world. And being Jewish and being American, I felt a little disconnected from the city, and at the same time was completely in love with it. Why? What do you like about Cairo? It's a hectic and sort of decrepit and welcoming and overwhelming and beautiful city. Like Istanbul and other cities, you can see the layers of history. In Istanbul it's there for the taking, but with Cairo, you have to work a little more for it. I appreciated that.   Yet there was this disconnect between my love of the city and my sense of Jewish identity. For good reason or not, I felt nervous about coming out to people as Jewish. This disconnect continued for a few months and then one day I happened upon a graveyard. I noticed these Jewish Star of David headstones and came upon this synagogue, the Ben Ezra Synagogue which is at the center of the book. I heard this tour guide talking about 1,000 years of Jewish history in Cairo. It's not an exaggeration to say it made me feel whole again. It connected these two parts that had been disconnected. And from then on, I was kind of obsessed with the Jews of Cairo. Donna Apidone interviewed Michael David Lukas on July 19, 2018.

This week, Uri and Rivky talked about the bipartisanship that showed itself, as usual, in the responses to the death of George H.W. Bush, before they got into their main topic: the NY Times opinion piece published last week, entitled “The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah.” Michael David Lukas, a secular Jew, grapples with what it means to be a Jew in modern America, especially one who wants to commemorate Hanukkah, but doesn't feel comfortable with the underlying messages of the holiday. We ask, is Lukas's argument fair? Do we sympathize with his dilemma? Is the original meaning of Chanukah no longer something worth celebrating? Or is he missing the point? George Bush and Dana Carvey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfVAEcxv4vo

The process of writing something daring doesn’t end with publication — authors have to live with the consequences of taking these risks, personally and socially. These panelists invite audience members to ask their own risky questions. Sponsored by the University of San Francisco, MFA in Writing Program.

Michael David Lukas, author of “The Oracle of Stamboul,” whose most recent novel is “The Last Watchman of Old Cairo,” in conversation with Richard Wolinsky. “The Last Watchman of Old Cairo” tells the story of a family hired a thousand years ago to guard a synagogue in Cairo, and of a secret scroll that may or may not exist. Michael David Lukas grew up in Berkeley and is a former Fulbright Scholar. Michael David Lukas website The post Michael David Lukas: “The Last Watchman of Old Cairo” appeared first on KPFA.

Novelists Mary Volmer and Michael David Lukas discuss short poems by Rebecca Wolff and Carol Snow. 07_ Novelists on Short Poems