Clerical Errors

Despite the inconvenient fact of his Jewish birth, Edmond Music chose the priesthood as a career. Entrenched at an English estate possessed of a fabulous library, he is pursuing a liaison with the Irish housekeeper, Maude. One day, Father Music's car is found wrapped around an Oak tree -- blessedly, without Edmond inside.

Washington Post Book World - Donna Rifkind

The impossibility of faith in an age of great wickedness is the theme of nearly every novel about the Holocaust, and is certainly not a new idea here. But Isler's idiosyncratic voice, with its literary echoes and keen appreciation for paradox -- comedy mixed with tragedy, sinners who are sinned against, quests for "the spark of goodness at the heart of evil" -- deepens and transforms a familiar subject into something rich and strange and not easily forgotten.

Alan Isler was born in London in 1934. He taught English literature in New York City for twenty-five years. His first novel, The Prince of West End Avenue, won the 1994 National Jewish Book Award and was one of five fiction finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of Kraven Images and The Bacon Fancier: Four Tales. He lives in New York City and Sag Harbor.