Songs for the butcher's daughter
Subtitle: a novel
By: Peter Manseau
Edition: 1st Free Press hardcover ed.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9781847373137; 9781847373120
Subjects: Russian Jews; Fiction; Yiddish Poets; Translators; Jews
Description: Summer, sweltering, 1996. A book warehouse in western Massachusetts. A man at the beginning of his adult life -- and the end of his career rope -- becomes involved with a woman, a language, and a great lie that will define his future. Most auspiciously of all, he runs across Itsik Malpesh, a ninetysomething Russian immigrant who claims to be the last Yiddish poet in America. When a set of accounting ledgers in which Malpesh has written his memoirs surfaces -- twenty-two volumes brimming with adventure, drama, deception, passion, and wit -- the young man is compelled to translate them, telling Malpesh's story as his own life unfolds, and bringing together two paths that coincide in shocking and unexpected ways.--from Publisher description (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0838/2007049787-d.html).