Zohar Jacobs
@zoharjacobs.bsky.social
Migrant Jewish intellectual, writer, historian, mystic | Fiction in Sunday Morning Transport, Analog, Asimov's & Clarkesworld | Oxford, UK
Never a bad excuse to post this, I guess
November 16, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Never a bad excuse to post this, I guess
Compensations for the shortening days
November 13, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Compensations for the shortening days
Autumn on St Giles a few days ago: red leaves in mid-fall.
November 10, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Autumn on St Giles a few days ago: red leaves in mid-fall.
Braziers Park is such a lovely place to spend a weekend writing. Highly recommended. web.braziers.org.uk/winter-write...
October 28, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Braziers Park is such a lovely place to spend a weekend writing. Highly recommended. web.braziers.org.uk/winter-write...
First sighting of Schattenfroh in the wild - on the special order shelf at @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk. I snuck a quick look and I'm not sure I dare, honestly.
October 26, 2025 at 12:46 PM
First sighting of Schattenfroh in the wild - on the special order shelf at @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk. I snuck a quick look and I'm not sure I dare, honestly.
New to me: a woman working in/adjacent to Mission Control in 1961. I have a few guesses as to identity but only guesses.
(Photo by Bill Taub, from "Photographing America's First Astronauts," shared by Gavin Price on X.)
(Photo by Bill Taub, from "Photographing America's First Astronauts," shared by Gavin Price on X.)
October 22, 2025 at 5:02 PM
New to me: a woman working in/adjacent to Mission Control in 1961. I have a few guesses as to identity but only guesses.
(Photo by Bill Taub, from "Photographing America's First Astronauts," shared by Gavin Price on X.)
(Photo by Bill Taub, from "Photographing America's First Astronauts," shared by Gavin Price on X.)
In Cromarty, a vibe: "FERRY SEASON ENDED."
October 12, 2025 at 6:39 PM
In Cromarty, a vibe: "FERRY SEASON ENDED."
Went up to Scotland by Caledonian Sleeper, which is ridiculously expensive but also irresistible if you're a train obsessive or, y'know, a romantic (a writer, in other words). Waking up somewhere completely different...
October 12, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Went up to Scotland by Caledonian Sleeper, which is ridiculously expensive but also irresistible if you're a train obsessive or, y'know, a romantic (a writer, in other words). Waking up somewhere completely different...
Back from one writing retreat, already pondering the next. Cannot say enough good things about Moniack Mhor. What a brilliant, kind, inspiring group of people, and can you imagine a better place to write?
October 12, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Back from one writing retreat, already pondering the next. Cannot say enough good things about Moniack Mhor. What a brilliant, kind, inspiring group of people, and can you imagine a better place to write?
Not to mention that some of us would go for Bernstein over Woodward...
September 16, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Not to mention that some of us would go for Bernstein over Woodward...
Conference in Brussels – on the way back to the station spent a little time in @europeanbarguide.bsky.social's "best bar in Europe." Reading one of the best writers in Europe. Brilliant.
September 15, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Conference in Brussels – on the way back to the station spent a little time in @europeanbarguide.bsky.social's "best bar in Europe." Reading one of the best writers in Europe. Brilliant.
"To write is to aspire towards... the mystery of a clearing that is other than the self, the vast windowless sunlit room of living experience. To write is to participate in the struggle to efface oneself. The problem is that the self keeps getting in the way."
– Simon Critchley, On Mysticism
– Simon Critchley, On Mysticism
August 28, 2025 at 6:46 PM
"To write is to aspire towards... the mystery of a clearing that is other than the self, the vast windowless sunlit room of living experience. To write is to participate in the struggle to efface oneself. The problem is that the self keeps getting in the way."
– Simon Critchley, On Mysticism
– Simon Critchley, On Mysticism
Big fan account led by an international human rights attorney and an art historian who now works in film and TV. The funniest thing about this is how unbelievably typical it is.
May 9, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Big fan account led by an international human rights attorney and an art historian who now works in film and TV. The funniest thing about this is how unbelievably typical it is.
Weirdly, despite all the time I've spent in London, yesterday was the first time I've been past the base of the Gherkin.
May 8, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Weirdly, despite all the time I've spent in London, yesterday was the first time I've been past the base of the Gherkin.
You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.
March 29, 2025 at 8:48 PM
You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.
Full-on "All Summer in a Day" experience just now. Literally first glimpse of sun in a week and I was stuck in a queue at the bubble tea place.
February 14, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Full-on "All Summer in a Day" experience just now. Literally first glimpse of sun in a week and I was stuck in a queue at the bubble tea place.
What if a hurricane hit Houston during the first crewed Mars mission? In the midst of a chaotic evacuation, a young flight controller meant to be working the night shift has to take charge. My novelette is in the March/April edition of @asimovssfmag.bsky.social, on sale now...
February 14, 2025 at 11:57 AM
What if a hurricane hit Houston during the first crewed Mars mission? In the midst of a chaotic evacuation, a young flight controller meant to be working the night shift has to take charge. My novelette is in the March/April edition of @asimovssfmag.bsky.social, on sale now...
11. A is for "Alphabet," Inger Christensen's staggering dystopian ecological abecedarian poem. As well as the English translation, I own a Danish-French bilingual edition, just to savor the language. I share the opening here rather than the cover.
December 8, 2024 at 11:28 AM
11. A is for "Alphabet," Inger Christensen's staggering dystopian ecological abecedarian poem. As well as the English translation, I own a Danish-French bilingual edition, just to savor the language. I share the opening here rather than the cover.
10. How about non-fiction? Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" not only offers brilliant literary prose – it captures the vibe of the early American space program like no other book.
December 7, 2024 at 9:17 PM
10. How about non-fiction? Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" not only offers brilliant literary prose – it captures the vibe of the early American space program like no other book.
9. Too obvious? "Saint of Bright Doors" by @vajra.me is the fantasy novel of the decade for me. For many other people too, it turns out.
December 6, 2024 at 11:57 AM
9. Too obvious? "Saint of Bright Doors" by @vajra.me is the fantasy novel of the decade for me. For many other people too, it turns out.
8. And for more recent short stories... "Gods of Want" by K-Ming Chang is visceral, weird, unbelievably good prose at the margins between spec and litfic; all about queerness and the immigrant experience; women and their mothers and aunts and countless cousins.
December 5, 2024 at 5:16 PM
8. And for more recent short stories... "Gods of Want" by K-Ming Chang is visceral, weird, unbelievably good prose at the margins between spec and litfic; all about queerness and the immigrant experience; women and their mothers and aunts and countless cousins.
7. If I had to rescue one volume of short stories, it would be the collected Cynthia Ozick. Wonderfully Jewish stories, often with an edge of the fantastical. And she does literary rivalries like no one else.
December 5, 2024 at 4:58 PM
7. If I had to rescue one volume of short stories, it would be the collected Cynthia Ozick. Wonderfully Jewish stories, often with an edge of the fantastical. And she does literary rivalries like no one else.
6. Quiet, repetitive, elegiac, strangely compelling, relating the smallest details of the life of an elderly gay man, Andrew Holleran's "Kingdom of Sand" ranks alongside the great works of queer literature.
December 3, 2024 at 8:18 PM
6. Quiet, repetitive, elegiac, strangely compelling, relating the smallest details of the life of an elderly gay man, Andrew Holleran's "Kingdom of Sand" ranks alongside the great works of queer literature.
5. Although I love "The Charioteer," the Mary Renault novel of my heart will always be "Return to Night." And yes, I chose the edition with the cheesiest cover art. Why not.
December 3, 2024 at 5:47 PM
5. Although I love "The Charioteer," the Mary Renault novel of my heart will always be "Return to Night." And yes, I chose the edition with the cheesiest cover art. Why not.
4. Everything from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social is worth reading. But I have a soft spot for A Terrible Country, about a young postgrad moving back to Russia to look after his grandmother. Nothing huge happens but it has the compelling quality of coming across an old blog & reading it all in one go.
December 2, 2024 at 9:32 PM
4. Everything from @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social is worth reading. But I have a soft spot for A Terrible Country, about a young postgrad moving back to Russia to look after his grandmother. Nothing huge happens but it has the compelling quality of coming across an old blog & reading it all in one go.