Episode 41: Jason Diamond
on being a (Jewish-) American Author
Jason Diamond’s Five Books:
4. The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler
5. Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond
Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a bonus selection by literary insider Erika Dreifus.
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
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Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.
In this conversation, Jason Diamond unpacks what it means to be an American, Jewish, or Jewish-American author. We also discuss family secrets, Jewish gangsters, the humor and alienation of Franz Kafka, and how Art Spiegelman’s Maus taught Jason to accept his family’s silences.
Jason’s debut novel, Kaplan’s Plot, follows Elijah Mendes, who returns to Chicago after his tech business collapses and discovers that his family owns a Jewish cemetery, where a man he’s never heard of — his great-uncle Solomon Kaplan — is buried. As Elijah begins to untangle his family’s past, the novel moves between his present-day relationship with his mother, Eve, who is dying of cancer, and the earlier story of his grandfather, Yitz Kaplan. That past narrative traces Yitz and his brother Sol from a pogrom in Odessa to their arrival in America alone, and follows the brothers’ complicated bond as Yitz rises to become a Jewish gangster in 1920s Chicago.
Jason Diamond has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal, McSweeney's, NPR, and many other outlets. He is the author of The Sprawl and the memoir Searching For John Hughes. He is the co-author (with Nicolas Heller) of New York Nico's Guide to NYC. Kaplan’s Plot is the 2026 Fiction Award winner from the Association of Jewish Libraries.
Other Authors who Chose Art Spiegelman’s Maus:
- Benjamin Resnick on the Enduring Precariousness of Jewish Life
- Georgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History and Kindness as Resistance
