Description

‘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?

Publisher Review

'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 Toibin 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 * 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 '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 mesmerised 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 *