{"product_id":"place-envy-essays-in-search-of-orientation","title":"Place Envy: Essays in Search of Orientation","description":"\u003cb\u003eA queer, Jewish writer searches for belonging across countries, identities, and histories in a moving collection of essays about orientation and home.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGrowing up in places where his family had no past, and met mostly by silence from his Holocaust-refugee grandparents, Michael Lowenthal longed to be from somewhere. Then he realized he was gay and felt displaced from his own displaced family. \u003ci\u003ePlace Envy\u003c\/i\u003e--his first book of essays after five acclaimed books of fiction--chronicles his quest for orientation in the world: as an agnostic Jew, as a queer traveler and lover, and as a writer who can tell or twist the truth. Yearning for a queer lineage, he obsesses about an uncle who perished at Bergen-Belsen but then finds, in his grandmother's German hometown, a more surprising legacy. He lives with a Pennsylvania Amish family; accompanies blind gay men on a Mexican cruise; plays jazz with Sun Ra, the Afrofuturist who claimed to hail from Saturn; and pursues a clarifying love affair in Brazil. Collectively, these essays recount Lowenthal's many journeys of dislocation and relocation: to foreign countries and subcultures and to the riskiest shores of family and self.\u003cdiv style=\"display:none\"\u003eISBN-10: 0814259669\u003cbr\u003eISBN-13: 9780814259665\u003cbr\u003eAuthor: Lowenthal, Michael\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Mad Creek Books\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Mad Creek Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback (Feb 2026)","offer_id":46100079706309,"sku":"9780814259665","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0708\/6414\/2533\/files\/9780814259665.jpg?v=1776647452","url":"https:\/\/www.inveni.store\/products\/place-envy-essays-in-search-of-orientation","provider":"Inveni","version":"1.0","type":"link"}