Songs for the Butcher's Daughter : A Novel (Paperback)

from ForeignCircus

This wonderful book tells the tale of a young Catholic graduate with a love of language who finds himself the custodian of a library of Yiddish texts. He finds himself drawn into the story of Itsik Malpesh, the self-proclaimed greatest Yiddish poet in America. The book unfolds along two timelines...

from nbmars

This book is a superlative tale of two intersecting lives that takes place amid a swirl of words and languages and the alphabets that produce them. The result is such a melodious harmony of coincidences that you will feel as if you are at a transcendent orchestral performance of literature. I was...

from Rdra1962

This is a really special book, in the vein of History of Love. It is written by a catholic (son of a former nun and a still-priest!!) Peter Manseau was turned on to Yiddish by an African American pastor, and has turned his love for the ancient , dying language into a poetic story. See the Jeff Sh...

from suetu

How did a Catholic boy write this? I am a secular Jew. Like myself, this novel is far more ethnic than religious. It's incredibly Jewish, but at the same time wonderfully inclusive. What I mean is, you do NOT have to be Jewish to read and enjoy this novel. In fact, it is a tale literally being to...

from SqueakyChu

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for a variety of reasons. An odd one was that the author of this award-winning book of "Jewish fiction" is not even himself Jewish! The story is of a poet, Itzak Malpesh, who is an immigrant from Russia where his family endured a harsh life from the many progroms th...