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This is the first complete English-language translation of a classic of Yiddish literature, one of the great comic novels of the twentieth century. The Zelmenyaners describes the travails of a Jewish family in Minsk that is torn asunder by the new Soviet reality. Four generations are depicted in riveting and often uproarious detail as they face the profound changes brought on by the demands of the Soviet regime and its collectivist, radical secularism. The resultant intergenerational showdowns- including disputes over the introduction of electricity, radio, and electric trolley- are rendered with humor, pathos, and a finely controlled satiric pen. Moyshe Kulbak, a contemporary of the Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, picks up where Sholem Aleichem left off a generation before, exploring in this book the transformation of Jewish life.
About the author
Moyshe Kulbak (1896-1937) was a leading Yiddish modernist poet, novelist, and dramatist. He is the author of
Childe Harold of Dysna and
The Messiah of the House of Ephraim, among other works. He was arrested and executed in 1937, during the wave of Stalinist repression that hit dozens of Yiddish and other writers and cultural activists throughout Soviet Belarus.
Hillel Halkin, an acclaimed translator of Hebrew and Yiddish fiction, is the author of
A Strange Death (2005),
Yehuda Halevi (2010), and
Melisande! What Are Dreams? (2013), among others. Sasha Senderovich is the author of
How the Soviet Jew Was Made (2022). He teaches at the University of Washington, Seattle.
