Before All The World - Softcover

Rothman-Zecher, Moriel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472157435 ISBN 13: 9781472157430

Publisher: Corsair, 2024

Synopsis

''A mesmeric, enrapturing read'' Eimear McBride

''Beautiful and original'' Colm Tóibín

''In startling language filled with the flavor of Yiddish''s combination words, [Before All the World] moves forward and back and forward again in a dreamlike trance that acknowledges how the worst suffering exists side by side with the tender beauty of memory, friendship, words and the silences of recognition'' Ilana Masad, NPR

''Before All the World is poetry as it should be: deliberate while feeling casual, a game with words that is at once playful and deadly serious (sometimes by turns, sometimes truly simultaneously) . . . It swallowed me up, and then all at once, a word or a phrase would reach me like a bolt of lightning, charring and electrifying me all through'' Jo Niederhoff, Seattle Book Review

''Resembles something by Joyce or Samuel Beckett . . . A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world''s darkness'' Stephanie Cross, The Daily Mail

''Before All the World leaves you breathless . . . [Rothman-Zecher] has found a way to teach us how to find out what is most important about ourselves by losing himself in this novel of ingenious daring imagination and allowing us to accompany him on his ride. It is a masterful accomplishment that remains with the reader long after finishing this brilliant work'' Elaine Margolin, Women in Judaism

''An emotionally evocative exploration of the impossibility of escaping trauma, yet finding hope nevertheless when all seems destroyed'' Hannah Srour-Zackon, The Canadian Jewish News

''At its core, Before All the World considers one essential question: what does it mean to remember the past while still imagining the future? . . . Its most striking accomplishment is its invitation to the reader to become a part of the novel''s chorus. What will you do, it asks, now that you''ve read this story?'' Adina Applebaum, Jewish Book Council

''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'' Ed Simon, The Millions, ''Most Anticipated Books of 2022''

''Rich and engrossing . . . A powerful story, brilliantly told'' Publishers Weekly, starred review

''A one-of-a-kind creation'' Kirkus Reviews

''ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh''
''I do not believe that all the world is darkness''

In the swirl of Prohibition-era Philadelphia, 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 to hear his native tongue spoken by this beautiful Black man from the Seventh Ward whose life he will come to share.

Leyb is haunted by memories from before he came to America, growing up in the shtetl of Zatelsk, where one day every last person - except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl, and he himself - was taken to the forest and killed.

Flowing with a surge of language and synchrony, Gittl and Leyb are reunited - surrounded by the murmur of angelic voices - and together with Charles they each grapple with how to face, and sieze, whatever future lies ahead.

Carried along by questions of survival and hope, Before All the World lays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way, and the power that comes from our responsibility to the future. It asks, in the voices of its angels, the most essential question: What do you intend to do before all the world?

About this title

About the Author

Moriel Rothman-Zecher is a Jerusalem-born novelist and poet. His first novel, Sadness Is a White Bird, was a finalist for a Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a National Jewish Book Award, won an Ohioana Book Award, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His poetry and essays have been published in The American Poetry Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, The Common, The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, and ZYZZYVA, and he is the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honor, two MacDowell Fellowships, and Yiddishkayt's Wallis Annenberg Helix Fellowship.

From the Back Cover

'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 Blackouts

I do not believe that all the world is darkness.

In the swirl of Prohibition-era Philadelphia, 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 to hear his native tongue spoken by this beautiful Black man from the Seventh Ward whose life will soon become entwined with his.

Leyb is haunted by memories from before he came to America, growing up in the shtetl of Zatelsk where one day every last person - except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl, and he himself - was taken to the forest and killed.

When fate brings Gittl and Leyb back together, they must each grapple with how to face, and sieze, what lies ahead.

Carried along by questions of survival and hope, Before All the World lays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way, and the power that comes from our responsibility to the future. It asks, in the voices of its angels, the most essential question: What do you intend to do before all the world?

'In startling language filled with the flavour of Yiddish's combination words, [Before All the World] moves forward and back and forward again in a dreamlike trance that acknowledges how the worst suffering exists side by side with the tender beauty of memory, friendship, words and the silences of recognition' Ilana Masad, NPR, a Best Book of the Year

Edition details

• Publisher: Corsair
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1472157435
• ISBN 13: 9781472157430
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336