Hamburger, Aaron

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HAMBURGER, Aaron

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Graduate of Columbia University and University of Michigan.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Teacher in Brooklyn, NY.

AWARDS, HONORS: First prize, David Dornstein Memorial Creative Writing Contest for Young Adult Writers; Edward F. Albee Foundation fellowship.

WRITINGS:

The View from Stalin's Head (short stories), Random House (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Village Voice, Out, Nerve, and Time Out New York.

SIDELIGHTS: Aaron Hamburger's The View from Stalin's Head is a collection of ten post-cold war stories, most of which are set in Prague. The characters tend to be young, gay, Jewish-American men. "You'd think that a writer cutting down the field in this way might be limiting his audience," wrote Daniel Soar in the New York Times Book Review, "but what's striking about Hamburger's singular choice of identities isn't the identities themselves so much as their common assertiveness. A gay American Jew in Prague is a very different proposition from a straight Czech atheist—and different not just in kind but in degree: louder, more noticeable, more colorful. Self-assertion is a big deal for Hamburger's characters: they're all concerned with how they appear."

In one story, "Garage Sale," a Canadian named Simon, who is confused about his sexual orientation, teaches English in a coffee factory, where he becomes involved with a female student. A Kirkus Reviews contributor felt the two best stories to be "The Ground You Are Standing On" and "Law of Return." In the former, tourist Sarah Schroeder's experiences give her new reasons to become more invested in her Jewishness. In the latter, Michael leaves Prague to vacation in Israel, taking along girlfriend Becky to throw his Aunt Sarah off the trail. Once in Israel he recommits to his cousin Eli, with whom he had once had an affair. Among the characters who are not gay is Rachel, who is often mistaken for being gay but who is looking for a husband to please her nagging mother.

Of the Hamburger's debut, Boston Globe contributor Barbara Fisher felt that "this brilliant collection of stories … manages at once to express scorn, confusion, and affection for the careless disarray of Czech society." And Library Journal critic Lawrence Rungren called The View from Stalin's Head "a provocative and often striking first collection."