The monks curated a vast manuscript and book collection at the Library of Clairvaux Abbey, a site in Champagne, France, founded in 1115. The group of 12th- and 13th-century works expanded to more than ...

The material on the covers of books from a French abbey was too hairy to have come from calves or other local mammals.

Centering mostly on rabbis and their wayward, modernity-seeking children, the novel — a melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny — offers an ...