Erika Dreifus

Typically, this time of year brings a post in which I review my past year in Jewish books. (Here’s last year’s edition, for just the most recent example.) But this year, I’m opting to do something different.

If you follow bookish sites, or even simply book coverage elsewhere, you’ve likely been catching lots of lists setting forth the “most anticipated” books of 2025. As far as I’ve noticed, as “diverse” as those lists may seem to be, the presence of Jewish books—never mind translations of Israeli titles first written in Hebrew—ranges between “slight” and “nonexistent.”

(In the meantime, of course, the most prominent lists are building up buzz for new books by plenty of authors whose “criticism of Israel,” as demonstrated on multiple statements, petitions, etc., has crossed over into antisemitism, whether they acknowledge that or not.)

Having met a deadline a tad earlier than expected, I found myself with a short window of unexpected free time. It wasn’t quite enough to pitch, draft, and revise an actual article for an editor, but it was enough for me to do something.

I decided to take a quick look through one book-industry platform where reviewers (and others) can locate information about forthcoming titles. There, I found—or, in some cases, was reminded of—a number of books that will be published this year.

The 10 titles below—including two that will be on sale next week—are just a sampling those on my radar.

Now, they’ll be on yours, too.

• Zeeva Bukai, The Anatomy of Exile: A Novel, Delphinium Books (out January 14).
• David Grossman, The Thinking Heart: Essays on Israel and Palestine (trans. Jessica Cohen), Vintage International (also out January 14).
• Ruth Franklin, The Many Lives of Anne Frank, Yale University Press (January 27).
• Allison Epstein, Fagin the Thief: A Novel, Doubleday (February 25).
• Iddo Gefen, Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory: A Novel (trans. Daniella Zamir), Astra House (April 1).
• Sara Lippmann and Seth Rogoff, eds, Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible, SUNY Press (April 1; I have a short story included in this anthology).
• Etgar Keret, Autocorrect: Stories (trans. Jessica Cohen and Sondra Silverston), May 27.
• Edward Hirsch, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy, Knopf (June 3).
• Tracy Slater, Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp, Chicago Review Press (July 8).
• Maya Arad, Happy New Years: A Novel (trans. Jessica Cohen), New Vessel Press (August 5).