Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, a novel by Peter Manseau
Summary
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 ninety-something 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.
Moving from revolutionary Russia to New York's Depression-era Lower East Side to millennium's-end Baltimore with drama, adventure, and boisterous, feisty charm to spare, the unpeeling of this friendship is a story of the entire twentieth century. It's a book about religion, love, and typesetting—how one passion can be used to goad and thwart the other—and most of all, about how faith in the power of words can survive even the death of a language.
A novel of faith lost and hope found in translation, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is at once an immigrant's epic saga, a love story for the ages, a Yiddish-inflected laughing-through-tears tour of world history for Jews and Gentiles alike, and a testament to Manseau's ambitious genius.
Excerpt
“The Memoirs of Itsik Malpesh”Links of Interest
Read Manseau's blog entry about the circumstances that led to the creation of Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter.Moment magazine interviews Manseau.
Listen to an interview with Manseau on NPR.
Reviews
The Weekend AustralianThe Revealer