Description
Book Synopsis''ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh''
''I do not believe that all the world is darkness''
In the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, Leyb meets Charles. They are at a former speakeasy called Cricket''s, a bar that welcomes, as Charles says in his secondhand Yiddish, feygeles. Leyb is startled; fourteen years in amerike has taught him that his native tongue is not known beyond his people. And yet here is suave Charles, fingers stained with ink, an easy manner with the barkeep, a Black man from the Seventh Ward, speaking to him in Jewish; Charles, who calls him ''Lion'', and with whom he will fall in love.
But Leyb is haunted by memories of life before, on another continent and the village of his birth where, one day, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl and he himself, was taken to the forest and killed.
Leyb''s two lifetimes come together when Gittl arrives in Philadelphia, thanks to a
Trade Review
'Evocative, inventive, vivid and strange Before All the World is a mesmeric, enrapturing read' * Eimear McBride *
Before All the World is beautiful and original. It is also strange, arresting, high-risk. Very quickly this novel starts to work on the mind, making itself felt in complex and powerful and visionary ways, led by rhythm in the language and the urge to make that language new -- Colm Tóibín
Before All the World startles and swirls, and makes fresh the experience of language itself. It has it all: a gripping story, an original structure and a tender, ghostly glow -- Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
Original, daring, experimental, moving, poignant, engaging . . . With shades of Tony Kushner and Cynthia Ozick . . . Before All the World understands how our worlds are made by words, and in the altering of the latter we may as yet redeem the former * The Millions, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2022' *
A one-of-a-kind creation * Kirkus Reviews *
Rich and engrossing . . . A powerful story, brilliantly told * Publishers Weekly, starred review *
Most closely resembles something by Joyce or Beckett . . . A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world's darkness. A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world's darkness -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail *
