| Italic Title: | For the Relief of Unbearable Urges |
| Author: | Nathan Englander |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Short story |
| Set In: | 7 |
| Publisher: | Alfred A. Knopf (US) Faber & Faber (UK) |
| Pub Date: | 1999 |
| Awards: | PEN/Malamud Award, Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction |
| Isbn: | 9780375404924 |
| Oclc: | 245836139 |
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is a short story collection by Nathan Englander, first published by Knopf in 1999. It has received many positive reviews.[1] It earned Englander a PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, as well as being a finalist for the 1999 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.
The collection contains nine stories, many of which are set in the Jewish Orthodox world. The title story tells of a married Hasidic Jew who receives special dispensation from a rabbi to visit a prostitute – "for the relief of unbearable urges."[2] The story "The Twenty-seventh Man", about Yiddish writers killed by Stalin, is an allusion to the Night of the Murdered Poets.