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"Is Superman Circumcised?" Wins Contest for Oddest Book Title of the Year
"Is Superman Circumcised? - The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero" by author Roy Schwartz has cut through the competition to claim the 2021 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book of the Year, earning a 51% share of the public vote.
The title - an academic study on the Jewish origins of the iconic DC Comics character - flew faster than a speeding bullet to quickly grab the number one spot in the polls when the public vote was first announced in early November, a lead it never relinquished. This is just the third time since voting for the Diagram Prize was opened to the public in 2000 that a winner has earned more than a 50% share, following 2018's "The Joy of Waterboiling" and 2011's magisterial "Cooking with Poo".
"Is Superman Circumcised?" beat the second-place finisher, "The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Fabergé" by 28 percentage points. Just over 11,000 members of the public cast a vote for the prize; only 2008's Diagram of Diagrams - a special 30th anniversary edition to salute the oddest title since the Diagram was founded in 1978 - has generated more interest.
"Congratulations to 'Is Superman Circumcised?' and its author Roy Schwartz for the heroic effort put into winning the 43rd Diagram Prize," stated Horace Bent, The Bookseller's legendary diarist and Diagram Prize administrator. "Mr Schwartz seems smarter than Lex Luthor (and presumably less evil) as I can't recall any author being so pleased to make the Diagram shortlist. He has been busier than Meryl Streep's publicist during Oscar season in pushing 'Is Superman Circumcised?' out to his fans."
Tel Aviv-born and New York resident Schwartz's book is a study of the Jewish influences on the "Mensch of Steel", from the character's creation by immigrant teens Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, who "based their hero's origin story on Moses, his strength on Samson, his mission on the golem, and his nebbish secret identity on themselves". Schwartz further argues that in the decades after Siegel and Schuster sold the rights, Superman's primarily Jewish writers, artists and editors continued to borrow Jewish motifs, such as basing Krypton's society on Jewish culture and a trial of Lex Luthor on Adolf Eichmann's.
"The competition was stiff, but I'm glad I was able to rise to the challenge... I'm sincerely honored to receive this august literary prize," stated Schwartz. "It's a great reminder that even serious literature is allowed to be fun."
"Is Superman Circumcised?" retails for US$45.00 is available for purchase at Amazon.com.
