Rediscover: Noah Gordon

American author Noah Gordon, "who was virtually unknown at home but whose novels about history, medicine and Jewish identity transformed him into a literary luminary abroad," died November 22 at age 95, the New York Times reported. Gordon's debut novel, The Rabbi (1965), spent 26 weeks on the Times' bestseller list. His other works include The Physician (1986), "the first book in a dynastic trilogy that began in 11th-century Persia, continued during the American Civil War with Shaman (1992) and ended with a modern woman doctor dealing with the morality of abortion in Matters of Choice (1996)," the Times noted. Although it had an initial print run of only 10,000 copies in the U.S., The Physician eventually "sold some 10 million copies, including more than six million in Germany, where, in the 1990s, six of Mr. Gordon's novels were on bestseller lists simultaneously." In 2013, The Physician was adapted into a German film, in English, starring Tom Payne, Stellan Skarsgard and Ben Kingsley. An award-winning musical based on the book is about to tour Spain.

Gordon won Spain's Silver Basque Prize for bestselling book in 1992 and 1995. His novels were also popular in Italy and Brazil. Shaman won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians as the best historical novel of 1991 and 1992. His last novel, The Winemaker, was published in 2012.

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