$100,000 Prize to The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit

By Lynn Garrett -- Publishers Weekly, 2/13/2008 10:41:00 AM

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-- it 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.