Chaim Potok books

Anthologies

Asher Lev Reading Order

Collections

Non-Fiction

Reuven Malther Reading Order

Standalone Novels

Chaim Potok was an American novelist, rabbi, and scholar whose fiction drew heavily on his own experience growing up in a traditional Jewish household. His debut novel, The Chosen, published in 1966, became a national bestseller and remains one of the most widely read novels about Jewish life in America. He followed it with The Promise, continuing the story of Reuven Malther and his friend Danny Saunders.

Potok’s other major work is the Asher Lev duology, beginning with My Name Is Asher Lev in 1972. These books follow a gifted young painter from a Hasidic family as he struggles with the tension between his artistic calling and his community’s values. Potok returned to Asher’s story in The Gift of Asher Lev nearly two decades later. Beyond his fiction, Potok wrote non-fiction including Wanderings, a personal history of the Jewish people, and several other works spanning art criticism and biography. He published steadily from the mid-1960s through the early 2000s, and a posthumous collection of his plays appeared in 2018.