Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish

paperplates books found immediate success with its first title, Cary Fagan's novel The Doctor's House, which received unanimous praise from reviewers and quickly went into a second printing. Its second title, Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish, a collection of short stories by Norman Ravvin, received just as warm a reception. (Even while in manuscript, the collection proved to be a winner, with an Emerging Artists Award, established by the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation.)

Read what the critics had to say:

"It's not always the case that when a writer assembles stories under one cover they feel like a collection, but with Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish there's a strong sense of a whole rather than just parts. These are stories of the lost: lost paintings, lost fathers, lost minds, lost pasts, lost birthplaces." Stephen Smith, Quill & Quire
"Norman Ravvin's Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish -- isn't that a drop-dead delicious title? -- will leave readers drooling for more. [...] Most of the stories ... drip with absurdly gorgeous fictional delights ...." Judith Fitzgerald, The Toronto Star
Norman Ravvin's collection ... has a quirkiness and skittishness that engages and tweaks the reader. [...] These stories are brief moments of disjuncture and disruption. They present the small cataclysms that compose our days. [...] Within this tumult of words are many sharp and eccentric twists." Peter O'Brien, The Globe and Mail

Absurdist, funny, tragic -- Norman Ravvin's short stories are exhilarating in their originality. The result of a startling alchemy, they combine old-fashioned fictional values with an off-kilter modernist technique, bringing together the dark old world of Europe and the bright new world of America.

In the title story, a Yiddish typewriter salesman and would-be writer finds unwanted inspiration in the voluptuous Lola. In Expatriate, a businessman wanders through Moscow in search of a painting stolen from his family during the war. And in Doomed Cinema, two New York agents try to buy a historic movie house and move it to an American theme park. The other stories in this remarkable collection are equally surprising and eerily delightful.

Born in Calgary in 1963, Norman Ravvin now lives in Montreal, where he writes and teaches. His first novel, Café des Westens (Red Deer College Press, 1991), received much acclaim from critics. Janice Kulyk Keefer praised his "powerful and beautiful writing" while the Calgary Herald called him "a remarkable talent". His latest work, A House of Words: Jewish Writing, Identity and Memory, was published by McGill-Queen's University Press. A travel book is forthcoming from Red Deer College Press.

Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish (ISBN 0-9680457-1-5) is distributed to stores by Marginal Distributing. You can also purchase it directly from the publisher. To obtain your copy by mail, send a cheque or money order for $14.00 [$12.00 plus $2.00 S/H] to
paperplates books
19 Kenwood Ave
Toronto, Ontario
M6C 2R8