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| Noah Gordon (photo: Nacho Arias) |
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American author Noah Gordon, "who was virtually unknown at home but whose novels about history, medicine and Jewish identity transformed him into a literary luminary abroad," died November 22, the New York Times reported. He was 95. Gordon's debut novel, The Rabbi (1965), spent 26 weeks on the Times' bestseller list, but "most of his subsequent eight books fared less successfully when they were published domestically, although they have proliferated since as e-books."
Michael Gordon, his son and literary agent, said the author's books have sold about 25 million copies in 34 languages. His other works include The Physician (1986), "the first book in a dynastic trilogy that began in 11th-century Persia, continued during the American Civil War with Shaman (1992) and ended with a modern woman doctor dealing with the morality of abortion in Matters of Choice (1996)," the Times noted.
Although it had an initial print run of only 10,000 copies in the U.S., The Physician eventually "sold some 10 million copies, including more than six million in Germany, where, in the 1990s, six of Mr. Gordon's novels were on bestseller lists simultaneously," the Times wrote. In 2013, The Physician was adapted into a German film, in English, starring Tom Payne, Stellan Skarsgard and Ben Kingsley. An award-winning musical based on the book is about to tour Spain.
"While Gordon has been published in 38 countries, Spain and Germany, where he is most popular, are two countries that grapple with a history of anti-Semitism," Andrew Silverstein wrote in the Forward this year. "While not all of Gordon's eight books have Jewish themes, most do, and his Jewishness is well known, which may play a role in his popularity in these two countries."
He won Spain's Silver Basque Prize for bestselling book in 1992 and 1995. His novels were also popular in Italy and Brazil. Shaman won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians as the best historical novel of 1991 and 1992. His last novel, The Winemaker, was published in 2012.
"Each morning I go to my computer in anticipation of the emails I receive from readers in many countries," Gordon wrote on his website. "I am grateful to every reader, for enabling me to spend my life as a scribbler of tales."