Laish

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Overview

A caravan of Jews wanders through Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century on a heartbreaking quest. Spiritual seekers and the elderly, widows and orphans, the sick and the dying, con artists and adventurers, victims of pogroms who have no place else to go–they are all on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but the journey is filled with unexpected detours and unanticipated disaster.

Among them is Laish, a fifteen-year-old orphan, through whose eyes we observe the interactions within this ragtag group of dreamers, holy men, misfits, and thieves as they battle with one another, try to stay one step ahead of the gendarmes, and do what little they can to keep up their flagging spirits. With the death of the rabbi who brought the group together, they are now led by men whom Laish refers to as “the dealers”–black-market traders whose motives are questionable but who periodically infuse the group with the money they need to get to the next town.

Years pass, tempers start to fray, and the caravan grows smaller as people die or abandon the venture. A brutal winter and typhoid epidemic further decimate the ranks, and the pilgrims have begun to reach the limits of their endurance. The dream of Jerusalem keeps the remnant going, and against all odds they finally arrive–emotionally and physically exhausted–at the port city of Galacz. They see their ship in the harbor, but whether they will actually make it onto that ship is suddenly and tragically thrown into doubt.

This magnificent new novel from Aharon Appelfeld (“One of the greatest writers of the age” —The Guardian) resonates with a universality of experience: the will to survive, the struggle to hold on to hope.

Editorial Reviews

Barry Unsworth

The bareness of style and absence of ornament oblige the reader to an active imaginative collaboration, endowing Laish's account with a feeling of total honesty, of being impelled by the pressures of circumstance, not elaborated beforehand, almost improvised. The appearance of simplicity, the look of unpremeditated speech, is, of course, by a familiar paradox, the result of care and control, and the success with which it is achieved, and the art disguised, is one of the most notable and impressive features of this strikingly original novel, comparable in its way, though very different in tone, to some of the early work of Ernest Hemingway, which Appelfeld has said was a formative influence.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Concentration camp survivor Appelfeld delivers a beautifully written, deeply disturbing tale of pilgrims en route to Jerusalem in pre-WWII Eastern Europe. Narrator Laish is a 15-year-old orphan employed by Fingerhut, a sickly and unpleasant "man of means." But when Fingerhut dies, Laish is forced to fend for himself among the pilgrims, finding work with the pious "old men" who teach him the Torah; Ploosh, a driver who kills one of the other members of the convoy; and Sruel, a former inmate who has a special connection with animals. As the journey wears on and the elements and sickness take their toll, the pilgrims reveal themselves to be a gallery of grotesques: they steal from each other, keep a mentally ill woman in a cage (and drive her out when she becomes too much trouble), sell one another out and are brutes in general. Appelfeld's gorgeous writing creates a stirring atmosphere, while Laish's observations and experiences illustrate some harsh truths about survival. (Mar.)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780805241594
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 3/10/2009
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 5.90 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Aharon Appelfeld is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Badenheim 1939, Tzili, The Iron Tracks (winner of the National Jewish Book Award), and The Story of a Life (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger). Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Bocaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received honorary degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, and Yeshiva University. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine), in 1932, he lives in Israel.

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Laish

Overview

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

Barry Unsworth

Publishers Weekly

Product Details

Meet the Author

Customer Reviews

Rating Distribution

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3 Star

2 Star

1 Star

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