The UnAmericans

Molly Antopol’s debut story collection takes us from America to Israel to the Soviet Union in critical moments of the last century. An absentee father, a former dissident from communist-era Prague, needles his adult daughter for details about her newly commissioned play when he fears it will cast him in an unflattering light. An actor, imprisoned during the Red Scare for playing up his communist leanings to get a part with a leftist film director, is shamed by his act when he reunites with his precocious nine-year-old son. A young Israeli journalist, laid off after America’s most recent economic crash, questions her life path when she begins dating a middle-aged widower still in mourning for his wife. These characters and more in Antopol’s stories struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control.