The Prince of Whitechapel
A Story of Exile and Survival
Format:Hardback
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers
Publishing:11th Mar '27
£22.00
This title is due to be published on 11th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
'A beautiful and deeply engaged journey into language and community' EDMUND DE WAAL, author of The Hare With Amber Eyes
'A miracle of research and tactful witness' IAIN SINCLAIR, author of The Last London
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This is the story of Yiddish. It is also the story of a penniless, charming writer on a mission to save his language, and a historian on a quest to follow him to the ends of a vanishing world.
The horrors of the Second World War could not stop one irrepressible man. In the aftermath of unimaginable loss, Avrom Nokem Stencl fought to keep his people’s language alive. After fleeing his shtetl, and only narrowing escaping the Nazis, he landed in London where he dedicated the rest of his life to the survival of his mother tongue. Historian Rachel Lichtenstein first heard about this unlikely hero from her grandparents, fellow Polish refugees to Whitechapel, and she became determined to uncover the mystery of his remarkable life.
In this historical detective story, spanning the twentieth century and travelling from London to Germany, Poland and the United States, Lichtenstein traces the destruction and miraculous survival of Yiddish. She excavates the vibrant Yiddish-speaking worlds her family and Stencl once inhabited and the haunting absences that still resound within those places. But she also finds a new community of her own in the present, redefining Yiddish life and language for a new generation.
This is a story of exile and survival, erasure and recovery, displacement and return. It is an elegy to lost worlds and a tribute to the resilience of a people and their language.
'Something truly special … singular, inventive and deeply emotive' KEIRON PIM, author of Endless Flight
‘One of the foremost social historians of London' The Guardian
'Something truly special, beautifully done – Rachel Lichtenstein uncovers the story of the great Yiddish poet of postwar London with all the warmth, diligence and humanity we have come to expect of her work' Keiron Pim, author of Endless Flight
'Vivid and timely, The Prince of Whitechapel is a must-read for anyone interested in the lost culture of the Jewish diaspora' Jerry White, author of Rothschild Buildings
'A brave and unyielding pursuit of a legendary poet … Rachel Lichtenstein, with her compassion and fabulous tale-telling, recognised this poet as the ultimate figure of light in her lifelong quest to recover and restore her own Jewish heritage. A miracle of research and tactful witness' Iain Sinclair, author of The Last London
'A vivid account [of] a mythic Yiddish luftmentsch … in the search for this intriguing character we also get a whirlwind tour of the contemporary Yiddishist world and rare glimpses of a lost Whitechapel' Ross Perlin, author of Language City
DIAMOND STREET:
‘A brilliant and moving book, intricate in its form and fabulous in its curiosity. It is suffused throughout with Rachel Lichtenstein’s fascination with people and place’ Robert Macfarlane
ON BRICK LANE:
‘In an age when modern, consumer culture is erasing so much of the past, Lichtenstein's anguish and instinct to preserve memory is admirable’ Jeanette Winterson, The Times
ISBN: 9780008751715
Dimensions: 240mm x 159mm x 21mm
Weight: 270g
352 pages