The 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature has been awarded to Lucette Lagnado for The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World (HarperCollins/Ecco). The prize--administered by the Jewish Book Council--carries a $100,000 cash award.
The New York Times called the memoir by Lagnado, a senior writer and investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, a “crushing, brilliant book.”
The Jewish Book Council also announced two winners of the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Choice Award: Ilana M. Blumberg for Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books (Univ. of Nebraska) and Eric L. Goldstein for The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity (Princeton). Each will receive a $7,500 cash award.
The Sami Rohr Prize was established in 2006 by Rohr’s family to honor the businessman and philanthropist’s love of Jewish literature. It is awarded to a nonfiction book or a novel in alternating years, and is the largest monetary prize of its kind in the Jewish literary world.