author
Victor Rubin
b. 1892
A little-known American novelist of the early 20th century, he is remembered for a bold debut that took on racial and religious intolerance in postwar America. His work has largely faded from view, which gives it a certain rediscovered curiosity today.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Victor Rubin was born in 1892 and died in 1967. Reliable catalog and library records tie him to at least one novel, Tar and Feathers, first published in the early 1920s and later reprinted. The book was presented as a postwar romance shaped by the social tensions of its time, with the Ku Klux Klan playing a central role in the story.
Modern catalog and public-domain sources suggest that Tar and Feathers is the work Rubin is chiefly known for today. Summaries of the novel describe it as dealing with prejudice, identity, and the strain between democratic ideals and bigotry in the years after World War I. Beyond that, firmly confirmed biographical details are scarce, so much of Rubin's life remains hard to trace.
That relative obscurity is part of what makes him interesting now: he appears to be one of those writers whose work survives more clearly than the record of the person behind it. For listeners and readers, Rubin offers a glimpse into the anxieties and arguments of 1920s America through a book that has outlasted its author's public profile.