Nothing Vast

A sweeping multigenerational tale complicates traditional narratives as it follows two families--one Moroccan, one Polish--filled with Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, and reactionaries.

Spanning from 1932 to 1973, Nothing Vast delves deeply into the circumstances and concerns of Jews in cities across the globe--in Poland, France, Morocco, and the United States--as well as in Israel. Giving voice to characters male and female, young and old, Moshe Zvi Marvit braids together stories of migration and struggle, of custom and superstition, of long-held secrets and lies. This beautifully crafted novel follows a survivor of sexual assault, a member of the French resistance, a dream interpreter, a petty criminal, and a venerated rabbi.

Based on the experiences and traditions of the author’s own half-Arab Jewish family, the book is rife with historical and cultural detail and with the intricacies of faith and identity, both personal and national. At the center of the novel is Israel itself--a place existing first in the collective imagination, then in reality as Marvit slips into nonfiction to document the establishment of the country and the reactions to its birth. The characters’ experiences upon arrival in their new nation are vastly different: one family is given a large orange grove upon which to establish a Yeshiva, while the other, not accorded the same privileges, lives beneath notice. The story takes yet another twist when, years later, a grandchild of one of the founding rabbis, seeking answers, discovers the origin of his family’s land.

Visceral, intellectual, and searching, Nothing Vast is nothing short of a virtuosic debut.

Moshe Zvi Marvit’s work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, the New Republic, Dissent Magazine, In These Times, the American Prospect, the Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Marvit lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.