The Peace Process — Bruce Jay Friedman

A brilliant new collection from one of American literature's most original and hilarious purveyors of dark comedy

Silenced by the horrors of Nazi Germany, a Jewish satirist is inspired to write again by his biggest fan: Joseph Goebbels. A retired English teacher dies on the operating table and wakes up to an afterlife in which literature does not exist; he can claim any masterpiece as his own, from "The Catcher in the Rye" to "Crime and Punishment" -- if only he can remember what actually happens in those stories. On his first trip to the Holy Land, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker reluctantly agrees to help a young Israeli Arab escape to New York, only to watch in dismay as the upstart lands a buxom, Yiddish-speaking girlfriend and a monster movie deal.
 
Mario Puzo once said that the world of Bruce Jay Friedman's short fiction is “like a Twilight Zone with Charlie Chaplin.” Ironic, clever, perceptive, and hysterical, THE PEACE PROCESS is vintage Friedman -- fourteen finely crafted tales that take dead aim at the sweet spot between pleasure and pain.