Before All the World
A Novel
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ISBN10: 1250872162
ISBN13: 9781250872166
Trade Paperback
344 Pages
$19.00
CA$26.00
I do not believe that all the world is darkness.
In the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, 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; fourteen years in amerike has taught him that his native tongue is not known beyond his people. And yet here is suave Charles—fingers stained with ink, an easy manner with the barkeep—a Black man from the Seventh Ward, a fellow traveler of Red Emma’s, speaking Jewish to a young man he will come to call Lion.
Lion is haunted by memories of life before, in Zatelsk, where everyone in his village, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl, and Leyb himself, was taken to the forest and killed.
Then, miraculously, Gittl is in Philadelphia, too, thanks to a poem she wrote and the intervention of a shadowy character known only as the Baroness of Philadelphia. And surrounding Gittl are malokhim, the spirits of her siblings.
Flowing and churning and seething with a glorious surge of language, carried along by questions of survival and hope and the possibility of a better world, Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Before All the World lays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way ahead, 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?
Reviews
Praise for Before All the World
“Boldly imagined . . . Before All the World may be set in the 1930s, but it feels as though it is outside of time . . . Rothman-Zecher has uncovered something extraordinary: trauma itself is a kind of translation. It’s a recreation of events that becomes more removed as time goes on, and language is our only guide.”—Mara Sandroff, Newcity Lit
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
“Before All the World is beautiful and original. It is also strange, arresting, high-risk. Very quickly this novel starts to work on the mind, making itself felt in complex and powerful and visionary ways, led by the rhythm in the language and the urge to make that language new.”—Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician
“Evocative, inventive, vivid, and strange, Before All the World is a mesmeric, enrapturing read.”—Eimear McBride, author of Strange Hotel
“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 We the Animals
“Before All the World is a song about survival and a refusal to be erased. Daringly crafted and poetically told, this novel is a celebration of Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s extraordinary talent, compassion, and love for humanity. To read Before All the World is to abandon all of our expectations and privileges so that the torch of curiosity and the beauty of words can lead us to unexpected places, where we can see ourselves in those whom we might have considered the Other.”—Nguyen Phan Que Mai, author of The Mountains Sing
“A ride as breathtaking as it is gratifying, Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Before All the World deftly explores the relationship between three broken people: two pogrom refugees persecuted in their homeland by virtue of religion who cross an ocean to cross paths with a man persecuted in his own homeland by virtue of race. With tragicomic adroitness, Rothman Zecher’s meticulous prose is full of delicious humor and irony, a glorious Yidenglish tapestry confirming that the world is indeed not all darkness.”—Kia Corthron, author of Moon and the Mars
“Before All The World is astonishing, spellbinding and poetic. It is a groundbreaking and awe-inspiring song of resilience, memory, identity and love. I can’t recall the last time I was so mesmerized by a work. The way the reader is carried by its characters, transported by its language, enveloped by its many worlds is stunningly beautiful. Simply, it’s a masterpiece—one of those rare books that upon reaching its last words you immediately need to start reading again!”—Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped
“A one-of-a-kind creation.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Rich and engrossing . . . A powerful story, brilliantly told.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
a mayseh
Once there was a child what was called Reyza.
di mayseh iz avek.1
a beforemayseh
Once there was a jew what was called Gittl, and Gittl sat amidst a pile of her siblings what were called...
