The Book of Paradise
The Marvellous Life Story of Samuel Abba Strewth
Itzik Manger author Robert Adler Peckerar translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pushkin Press
Published:28th Sep '23
Should be back in stock very soon
The raucously witty Yiddish classic about a Jewish Paradise afflicted by very human temptations and pains, in a new translation On being expelled from Paradise, young Samuel Abba pulls a crafty trick, managing to arrive on earth with his memory intact. He quickly begins regaling the humans around him with mischievous stories of a Paradise far from their expectations: a world of drunken angels, lewd patriarchs and the same divisions and temptations that shape the human world. The Book of Paradise is a comic masterpiece, and the only novel by one of the great Yiddish writers. Written in the midst of rising anti-Semitism in 1930s Europe, its raucous blend of sacred and profane is a slyly profound reflection of the author's turbulent times.
There is something joyous about Manger's playful language -- David Herman * Jewish Chronicle *
Itzik Manger's novel strikes an utterly distinctive note in modern fiction-a high-spirited amalgam of whimsy, fantasy, and satire, all of it anchored in a rich sense of the folklore, belief system, and social behavior of East European Jewry before modernity. The book is a delight to read, and it is well-served by Robert Adler Peckerar's lively, colloquially vivid translation from the Yiddish -- Robert Alter
Electrifying... sparkles with Manger's song and poetry, and is brilliantly layered with literary and folkloric references' * Tablet *
ISBN: 9781782279259
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages