Songs for the Butcher's Daughter
Subtitle: A Novel
Publisher: Free Press
Published: September 9, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9781416538707
Subjects: Literary; Fiction / Literary; Fiction; Fiction - General; Jews, Russian; Poets, Yiddish; Translators; United States
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).