Copies of Born to Kvetch at the Koffler Centre, Toronto. Photo from the 2008 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards, courtesy of the Koffler Centre of the Arts
Michael Wex is best known for his New York Times best-selling book on the history and development of Yiddish, Born to Kvetch. The follow-up Just Say Nu took up where Kvetch left off – providing vocabulary for those wanting to try out their Yiddish. How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck), Wex’s latest non-fiction book, is a manual for pursuing happiness while still acting with integrity, honor and compassion.
Wex has also written fiction: Shlepping the Exile, an inside-portrait of orthodox, post-Holocaust Judaism in a place that it never expected to be (soon to be reissued by St. Martin’s Press), the novella The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon, Boy Talmudist, a comic strip epic in prose and his latest novel, The Frumkiss Family Business – a corrosive, hilarious Canadian family saga.