Englander, Nathan. For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Nathan Englander ventured outside the insular Orthodox Jewish world of his New York community to master the art of writing. In this pursuit, he traversed foreign borders and discovered that he could not find his way home. He now lives in Jerusalem and has burst onto the literary scene with this exquisitely crafted collection of short stories, delectably entitled For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. The search for connection and meaning, belonging and secur-ity give definition to the unbearable urges that animate the characters in these stories. Yet the quest emerges from cir-cumstances that are thrust upon the protagonists and prove beyond their control. In one story, a buttoned-up Protestant undergoes a religious awakening in the back of a taxi on his way home. He realizes to his utter astonishment that he is actually Jewish. The task he sets for himself and his wife is to learn how to swallow this indigestible fact. In another, a cleri-cal error lands an unpublished author in one of Stalin's prisons, where he is scheduled for execution with twenty-six other writers, and in the shadow of death he must compose his mini-masterpiece. Acrobats and wigmakers somersault through these pages, performing feats that land them out of harm's way or squarely in its path. Englander captures precarious moments when people totter on the edge of a tradition, and the reader is left to balance the tears and the giggles, the gasps and the sighs so imaginatively and surprisingly evoked.