Before All The World

'ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh'

'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, speaking to him in Jewish; Charles, who calls him 'Lion', and with whom he will fall in love.

But Leyb is haunted by memories of life before, on another continent and the village of his birth where, one day, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl and he himself, was taken to the forest and killed.

Leyb's two lifetimes come together when Gittl arrives in Philadelphia, thanks to a poem she wrote and the intervention of a shadowy character known only as the Baroness. And surrounding Gittl are malokhim, the talkative spirits of her siblings.

Flowing and churning with a glorious surge of language, 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?

“'Evocative, inventive, vivid and strange Before All the World is a mesmeric, enrapturing read'”

'Evocative, inventive, vivid and strange Before All the World is a mesmeric, enrapturing read' Eimear McBride
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 rhythm in the language and the urge to make that language new -- Colm Tóibín
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
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 The Millions, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2022'
A one-of-a-kind creation Kirkus Reviews
Rich and engrossing . . . A powerful story, brilliantly told Publishers Weekly, starred review
Most closely resembles something by Joyce or Beckett . . . A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world's darkness. A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world's darkness -- Stephanie Cross Daily Mail

Moriel Rothman-Zecher is a Jerusalem-born novelist and poet. His first novel, Sadness Is a White Bird, was a finalist for a Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a National Jewish Book Award, won an Ohioana Book Award, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His poetry and essays have been published in The American Poetry Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, The Common, The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, and ZYZZYVA, and he is the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honor, two MacDowell Fellowships, and Yiddishkayt's Wallis Annenberg Helix Fellowship. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where he received the Donald Hall Scholarship for Poets. He lives in Philadelphia, and teaches creative writing at Swarthmore College.

'ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh' '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, speaking to him in Jewish; Charles, who calls him 'Lion', and with whom he will fall in love.But Leyb is haunted by memories of life before, on another continent and the village of his birth where, one day, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl and he himself, was taken to the forest and killed.Leyb's two lifetimes come together when Gittl arrives in Philadelphia, thanks to a poem she wrote and the intervention of a shadowy character known only as the Baroness. And surrounding Gittl are malokhim , the talkative spirits of her siblings.Flowing and churning with a glorious surge of language, 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?

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