From the Foreword

Leslie Simon has opened her own magical door, a novel of two dissenting sisters (and some kibitzing ghosts), estranged, entrenched in their positions, every bit as emotional and polarized as counter-demonstrators yelling at each other outside an Israeli embassy, and because she has given us fictional people to love, drawn us into their furious, aching hearts and the wild and semi-supernatural chatter in their heads, she’s made it possible to be curious about what we disagree with, made us want to understand what makes them tick, brought us to the family dinner table, where we can sit down with the whole menu of anguished arguments and notice, in the midst of raised voices and waving hands, how much we yearn to find our way to each other.

With passion and humor, she has made a literary clearing where polemics take on flesh and personality and dreams, a place full of haunted pasts and family dinners, actual journeys and journeys of the broken heart. With the help of two highly articulate dead people, she constructs and shatters her heroine’s certainties, taking us deeper and deeper into these women’s lives, making us listen, softening the hard places, until we are no longer spectators, until our own stories, the ones we each hold in our bones, in our bellies, about these two peoples, this one land, this war and all its long roots, until our own stories can no longer sit still, until they push aside the empty plates, the dregs of wine, lean forward, still listening, elbows on the tablecloth, hearts in our throats, and speak.”
- Aurora Levins Morales, Author of Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas

Praise for The Divine Comic

“Leslie Simon has crafted a work that provides another step in the essential discourse for transforming the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The characters are riveting, real and narrate the story through lives lived on a daily basis…The writing is captivating, so much so that I can hear the charged ferocity and feel the thrust of the pain throughout. Through the lives of the sisters, possibilities evolve that we all need to consider.”
- Daphne Muse, writer and former director of the Women’s Leadership Institute, Mills College

“The Divine Comic is an engrossing, powerful descent into the agony of American Jews trying to come to grips with a shattered dream. It’s a close study of a family with a past rooted in radical, anarchist and communist politics, haunted by the Nazi mass murders, and wrestling with their dismay over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The narrator, who travels to the Middle East to meet Israelis and Palestinians, reaches the conclusion that she must reject Israel’s occupation and Zionism but she has to reach out to her sister who has a history of angry rejections and whose own anguish pushes her close to suicide. The conflict unfolds, as it often does, at each Passover as the family comes together. These aren’t the usual family get-together blow-ups; instead, these are the arguments of a very politically aware liberal Jewish family thrown into crisis…Leslie Simon presents their tension with wit and insight. The Divine Comic is a rare book, dramatizing a transformation of attitudes that affects all Americans deeply.”
- Hilton Obenzinger, Author of Busy Dying and Treyf Pesach, winner of the American Book Award, and Associate Director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Stanford University

“The readers of Leslie Simon’s novel The Divine Comic will quickly feel at home with the deftly drawn characters who also embody the theme of the necessity of dialogue, of sincere, plucky efforts toward reconciliation and peace. Two of the major characters, the two sisters, Beatrice and Leah, stand for integrity/justice versus security—justice for the Palestinians, who are made homeless in their own home and security for the indigenous as well as the Holocaust-driven Jewish immigrant populations. Ultimately, the basis of this conflict boils down to those two words. Do those two words/values always have to be on a collision course? Simon’s novel offers the hope, persuasively, that this either-or fallacy can be overcome. With The Divine Comic, Simon has raised the genre of political novel to unparalleled heights. I look forward to using this novel as a required text in my class on American Cultures in Literature and Film. I have been waiting for such a book for a long time.”
- Abdul Jabbar, Professor Emeritus, City College of San Francisco

“The Divine Comic is an amazing book. I couldn’t put it down. Two Jewish sisters love each other but have different politics that split them apart. The main character begins to claim her identity while remaining true to her beliefs that all people deserve respect and freedom. Love affairs, ghosts (one especially funny ghost) all push the protagonist toward looking at her life. The book also reveals the terrible suffering of the Palestinians as the protagonist, Beatrice, goes on a brave journey thousands of miles from home. Ultimately, the book is about identity and the love of family.”
- Louise Nayer, author of Burned: A Memoir

“Leslie Simon’s Beatrice is the pilgrim rather than muse and guide to paradise in The Divine Comic. The novel is a tale of two sisters, Leah and Beatrice, rather than the traditional Leah and Rachel, and the two of them square off over the question of Palestine and Israel. This Beatrice is no saint—she goes by the nicknames Bicie, B.C. (as in Before Christ), and Beastie. Gone are the Christian iconography and game plan; Beatrice is decidedly Jewish. Instead of Virgil, Beatrice explores the terrain with her spirit guides Emma Goldman and her departed friend Danny Gonzalez, an early victim of the AIDS epidemic. A onetime stand-up comic, he is the putative “divine comic” of the title. Together, they are faced with the necessity of saving her sister who is caught in a downward spiral from potential suicide. The midpoint of the book sees Beatrice on a trip to Israel, although it is far from the traditional Aliyah. She is there to witness the devastating Palestinian refugee camps as much as she is to connect to her Jewish roots. Simon has taken one of the great works of the Western canon and playfully uses it to her own ends—feminist rather than patriarchal, Jewish rather than Christian. But she doesn’t stop there. She makes it clear that Islamic and Palestinian rights are just as fundamental and must be honored as well. A brilliant idea, beautifully executed.”
- Sally Abbott, author of Miami in Virgo

Interview: The Divine Comic: Q & A with author Leslie Simon. Lilith Blog. March 7, 2022 by Yona Zeldis McDonough “…[a] rollicking, inventive, and wholly original tale.”

Review: “Two Sisters: Three Opinions,” a review of The Divine Comic in Tikkun. May 6, 2022 by Nancy Reder “…a good read—quick to digest but not quick to forget.”

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