His latest novel, "Mother for Dinner", tells the story of a family of assimilated Cannibal-Americans, tasked with consuming (as is their tradition) the body of their deceased mother. A dark comedy about the cost of identity and dangers of history, it was called a "riotous dissection of cultural formation" by "Publisher's Weekly", and a "brilliant satire on tribalism" by Booklist. In the "Wall Street Journal", Sam Sacks wrote: "Everyone has different ideas about what's funny, and for me, the gold standard is dark Jewish humor — the more masochistic and taboo, the better. This sort of joking is scarce today — cultural homogenization and the current moral panic over giving offense have turned it into something like samizdat — but at least we have Shalom Auslander."