author
Ezra S. Brudno
1877–1936
A Jewish American writer and lawyer whose books drew on the hardships and hopes of immigrant life, he is best remembered for turning exile, poverty, and perseverance into vivid stories. His work offers a direct, human view of the early twentieth-century immigrant experience.
1 Audiobook
The Sublime Jester
by Ezra S. Brudno
About the author
Born in Lithuania on May 28, 1877, Ezra Selig Brudno came to the United States with his family in 1891 and settled in Cleveland. He studied in Cleveland and went on to practice law, later serving as an assistant district attorney while also building a reputation as a writer.
Brudno became known as one of Cleveland's notable Jewish authors in the early twentieth century. His best-known book, The Fugitive; Being Memoirs of a Wanderer in Search of a Home (1904), drew on the upheaval and wandering of immigrant life, and his fiction often explored identity, displacement, and the search for belonging.
Some library and catalog records list his dates as 1877–1936, but reliable reference sources identify his death as December 12, 1954. That longer lifespan fits the broader record of his legal career and later life in Ohio.