Perlman for Sydney’s Yom Hashoah
The author of The Street Sweeper – nominated for the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award – will feature at this month’s Holocaust remembrance ceremonies.
Elliot Perlman
Melbourne-based author Elliot Perlman will be the keynote guest at the ceremonies at Moriah College on Wednesday evening April 18 and at Masada College on Thursday evening April 19.
He will feature in conversation with NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive officer Vic Alhadeff at the ceremonies organised by the Board of Deputies Shoah Remembrance Committee, chaired by Michael Jaku.
The ceremonies will be preceded by a memorial service at the Martyrs Memorial at Rookwood on Sunday April 15 with Israeli Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Meir Itzchaki the guest speaker. This will be followed by a name-reading ceremony at the Sydney Jewish Museum at 1pm, at which the names of hundreds of people who perished in the Shoah will be read out.
The Street Sweeper is a novel which has the Holocaust and the US civil rights movement as its major themes.
Perlman’s previous book, Three Dollars, won the Age Book of the Year Award, the Betty Trask Award (UK), the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn-Rhys/Mail On Sunday Book of the Year Award (UK) as well as for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film of Three Dollars, which received the Australian Film Critics’ Circle Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as well as the A.F.I. Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His book of stories, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, was a national bestseller in the US where it was named a New York Times Book Review ‘Editors’ Choice’ and received the Steele Rudd Award for the best Australian short story collection in its year of publication. His second novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award as well as for the Queensland Premier’s Award for Fiction. Urging members of the community to attend at least one of the ceremonies, Jaku said: “As we move further away from the Holocaust, it is increasingly imperative that we participate in our Holocaust commemoration ceremonies. We strongly encourage members of the community to ensure that they attend at least one of the ceremonies.”
