This vast mural of the Ukraine, written in Yiddish 50 years ago and only now published in English, traces a year in the fortunes of the Jewish family Mashber, plunged from prosperity to penury as the Polish town that has sustained them falls into ruin. Material collapse is a metaphor for loss of true piety, for ritual observance that ignores the plight of the poor, whose miserable labor has brought wealth to Moshe Mashber. Tragedy strikes with a credit is no longer available to money-lending Moshe; he is tried and jailed; his daughter dies, then his wife, and, finally, Moshe himself. The novel is pervaded by death; whole families we have come to know and pity are stricken by starvation and disease. Perhaps the final volume would have offered some hope for the future, but the book was unfinished when its author (whose pseudonym means "the hidden one") died in a Russian prison hospital in 1950. Despite its grim tone, The Family Mashber is notable for its depth and breadth of characterization, noise and variety, coarse comedy and Goya-esque depiction of jostling, importunate mobs. Readers won't soon forget the mansions and hovels, refuse-strewn alleys and fragrant courts of the market town so vividly re-created in this powerful novel. Jewish Book Club alternate.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Family Mashber

Literature & Fiction

Nister, Der

Contemporary

HarperCollins, Publishers

First time in Paperback The Family Mashber is a protean work: a tale of a divided family and divided souls, a panoramic picture of an Eastern European town, a social satire, a kabbalistic allegory, an innovative fusion of modernist art and traditional storytelling, a tale of weird humor and mounting tragic power, embellished with a host of uncanny and fantastical ﬁgures drawn from daily life and the depths of the unconscious. Above all, the book is an account of a world in crisis (in Hebrew, mashber means crisis), torn between the competing claims of family, community, business, politics, the individual conscience, and an elusive God. At the center of the book are three brothers: the businessman Moshe, at the height of his fortunes as the story begins, but whose luck takes a permanent turn for the worse; the religious seeker Luzi, who, for all his otherworldliness, ﬁnds himself ever more caught up in worldly affairs; and the idiot-savant Alter, whose reclusive existence is tortured by fear and sexual desire. The novel is also haunted by the enigmatic ﬁgure of Sruli Gol, a drunk, a profaner of sacred things, an outcast, who nonetheless ﬁnds his way through every door and may well hold the key to the brothers’ destinies.

The Family Mashber (New York Review Books Classics)

Humor & Satire

NYRB Classics

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