Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407019543
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue

a Novel of Pastry, Guilt and Music

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Sep 2010
Paperback
3 Jul 2006
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A vivid, funny, exuberantly textured debut novel about a tight-knit, ethnically diverse New York neighbourhood on the brink of change, from the bestselling author of Cod, Salt and 1968.

It's the boom years of the 1980s, and life is closing in on Nathan Seltzer, who rarely travels outside his suddenly gentrifying Lower East Side neighbourhood. While he tries to decide whether he should cheat on his wife with Karoline, a German pastry chef whose parents may or may not have been Nazis, his father, Harry, is plotting with the 1960s boogaloo star Chow Mein Vega for the comeback of this dance craze. Meanwhile, a homicidal drug addict is terrorizing the neighbourhood.

With its ensemble cast of unforgettable characters, Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue is a comedy of cultures about the old and the new, about Latinos, Jews, Sicilians and Germans. It's about struggling to hold onto life in a rapidly changing world, about food and sex and about how our lives are shaped by love and guilt.
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407019543
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
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About the author

Mark Kurlansky

Mark Kurlansky is the bestselling author of several bestselling nonfiction titles including Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (winner of the Glenfiddich Best Food Book Award), The Basque History of the World, Salt: A World History, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World, a short story collection The White Man in the Tree and a novel, Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue.

portrait photo of Mark Kurlansky

Also by Mark Kurlansky

Cod
Birdseye
Salt
City Beasts
Ready for a Brand New Beat
Las Estrellas Orientales
The Eastern Stars
See all

Praise for Boogaloo On 2nd Avenue

A marvellous debut by any standards... Beautifully done

Sunday Telegraph

Exuberant...hilarious. Recipes for some of the mouth-watering dishes mentioned in the book provide a satisfactorily eccentric coda to an original New York novel

Good Book Guide

Just dive in and mind the chocolate

Jewish Chronicle

Rich and compelling. Warm social comedy, period detail and perceptive psychology... Kurlansky writes from the heart and taste-buds

Literary Review

Whimsical. Kurlansky's powers of description and humour are abundantly engaging... [An] impassioned, nostalgic, charmingly written novel

Daily Telegraph

Witty, hard-edged and mouth-watering. A tightly crafted, vibrant book filled with the romance and hardships of family life, violence, music and butter

I-D