In I, Wan­der­ing Jew, Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award – win­ning his­to­ri­an Yair Mintzk­er traces the tale of of Ahasver­sus back to its source, fol­lows its many meta­mor­phoses through five cen­turies, and relates it to the fraught present moment. A work of his­to­ry that reads like a detec­tive sto­ry, I, Wan­der­ing Jew is also part mem­oir. As Mintzk­er dis­cov­ers affini­ties between his own sto­ry and that of the Wan­der­ing Jew, the sur­pris­ing his­to­ry of an old anti­se­mit­ic trope and its mean­ings becomes a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on home and exile, Judaism and Chris­tian­i­ty, poet­ry and truth, the deep past and the present.