Award-winning author Steve Stern has written a wild, effervescent, absinthe soaked novel about the life of the remarkable expressionist painter Chaim Soutine (January 3rd, 1893 – August 9th,1943). From his impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl, to his emigration to Paris, to his Cinderella patronage by the American collector Albert Barnes, and his perilous flight from the Nazi occupation of France, The Village Idiot explores Soutine’s adventures and romances. This includes his unlikely friendship with the flamboyant painter Modigliani, who drags him from brothels to midnight felonies to a duel at dawn, while on the horizon the coming storm threatens to sweep away Chaim and a generation of gifted Jewish refugees.

Fiction
The Village Idiot
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2021
Discussion Questions

Jewish literature inspires, enriches, and educates the community.
Help support the Jewish Book Council.