Book excerpt: Etan Yogev had had no experience in bed—and hardly any outside of it—and it was not without a strong feeling of awkwardness and insecurity that he had first allowed Daphna Flinker to guide his somewhat ambivalent member into her own body, and his lips against her lips. She enjoyed it—this teacherly role—it had been a very long time since she had been able to practice the art of sexual instruction, and there was something exciting and alluring about this—all that innocence in a single place! A humorous and heartrending portrait of expatriate life, The Greatest Jewish American Lover in Hungarian History draws upon the hazards and confusions that occur when the Old World meets the New. In venues as diverse as Israel, Hungary, Paris, Cambridge, and even Texas, the stories portray life in an increasingly connected and globalized world. Michael Blumenthal displays the erotic zest of Philip Roth and the grim humanism of Isaak Babel. Michael Blumenthal, formerly director of creative writing at Harvard, graduated from the Cornell Law School with a JD degree in 1974, after studying philosophy and economics at the State University of New York at Binghamton. His eighth book of poems, No Hurry, was published by Etruscan Press in 2012. He is currently a visiting professor of law at the West Virginia University College of Law.