Songs for the Butcher's Daughter, Paperback

Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize

First Novel

In this acclaimed fiction debut, "a rich, often ironic homage to Yiddish culture and language" (Publishers Weekly), Peter Manseau weaves 100 years of Jewish history, the sad fate of an ancient language, and a love story shaped by destiny into a truly great American novel.

In a five-story walkup in Baltimore, nonagenarian Itsik Malpesh--the last Yiddish poet in America--spends his days lamenting the death of his language and dreaming of having his memoirs and poems translated into a living tongue. So when a twenty-one-year-old translator and collector of Judaica crosses his path one day, he goes to extraordinary efforts to enlist the young man's services. And what the translator finds in ten handwritten notebooks is a chronicle of the twentieth century. From the Easter Sunday Pogrom of Kishinev, Russia, to the hellish garment factories of Manhattan's Lower East Side, Itsik Malpesh recounts a tumultuous, heartrending, and colorful past. But the greatest surprise is yet to come: for the two men share a connection as unlikely as it is life-affirming.

With the ardent and feisty Itsik Malpesh, Peter Manseau has created a narrator for the ages and given him a story that will win over readers' hearts and keep them turning pages long into the night. Songs for the Butcher's Daughter is a literary triumph.

Peter Manseau, the author of the nonfiction works Killing the Buddha and Vows, lives in Washington, D.C. This is his first novel.