What do you think?
Rate this book
Lublin
Elya is the lad with the vision, and Elya has the map. Ziv and Kiva aren’t so sure. The water may run out before they find the Village of Lakes. The food may run out before the flaky crescent pastries of Prune Town. They may never reach the Village of Girls (how disappointing); they may well stumble into Russian Town, rumoured to be a dangerous place for Jews (it is). As three young boys set off from Mezritsh with a case of bristle brushes to sell in the great market town of Lublin, wearing shoes of uneven quality and possessed of decidedly unequal enthusiasms, they quickly find that nothing, not Elya’s jokes nor Kiva’s prayers nor Ziv’s sublime irritatingness, can prepare them for the future as it comes barrelling down to meet them. Absurd, riveting, alarming, hilarious, the dialogue devastatingly sharp and the pacing extraordinary, Lublin is a journey to nowhere that changes everything it touches.
160 pages, Paperback
Published April 2, 2024
33 people are currently reading
782 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
April 2, 2024
38th book of 2024.
Three Jewish boys in 1907 Poland are on the road to what could be an imaginary place, Lublin, to sell brushes. They fight, tell jokes, stop for plenty of pisses and stories.
And so on, and on. But for all the jokes, puns, play fights and tomfoolery, a thread of unease runs through the book. Someone else aptly refers to it as "the walking of Godot"; and, it's quite clear, that Wilkinson doesn't want us to feel too comfortable. There are frequent references to the future. And with so much lightheartedness, the darkness at the end of the book feels like the only payoff we should expect. And Wilkinson serves it to us like a roast pig with an apple in its mouth.
Three Jewish boys in 1907 Poland are on the road to what could be an imaginary place, Lublin, to sell brushes. They fight, tell jokes, stop for plenty of pisses and stories.
"An alter moid, who needs but cannot find a husband, agrees to meet the most undesirable man in Mezritsh and a date is arranged. The night of the date, there's a knock on the door. When she opens the door, the old spinster sees a man with no arms or legs sitting in an invalid's chair on wheels.
"How can I marry you?" she asks, "you have no legs."
"Which means I can't run out on you."
"You have no arms."
"I can't beat you."
"But are you still good in bed?" she enquires at last.
"I knocked on the door, didn't I?"
'What does a Russian bride get from her husband on her wedding day that's long and hard?' a restored Elya asks his friends.
'A new last name!'
'What do you call a beautiful girl in a Russian town?'
Elya is going for two in a row.
'A tourist.'
'A rabbi wanted to try pork,' says Elya. 'He drives his carriage one night to a distant Polish inn and order this forbidden food. And plenty of it. Just as the waiter sets down a whole roast pig with an apple in its mouth, the doors opens and a group of men from his synagogue enter. They stare at the rabbi in disbelief.
"What kind of farkakta is this?" the rabbi greets them, throwing up his hands. "You order an apple and this is how they serve it?"
And so on, and on. But for all the jokes, puns, play fights and tomfoolery, a thread of unease runs through the book. Someone else aptly refers to it as "the walking of Godot"; and, it's quite clear, that Wilkinson doesn't want us to feel too comfortable. There are frequent references to the future. And with so much lightheartedness, the darkness at the end of the book feels like the only payoff we should expect. And Wilkinson serves it to us like a roast pig with an apple in its mouth.
September 1, 2025
Winner of the Wingate Prize a literary award, given to the best book, fiction or non-fiction, to convey the idea of Jewishness to the general reader.
Winner of the 2025 Hawthornden Prize for Literature - for a work of “imaginative literature”
Winner of the 2025 RSL Encore Award for best second novel.
Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and Canada, dedicated to supporting small presses for their on-going commitment to work of high literary merit.
A crude version of the ballpoint pen, used only to mark rough surfaces such as animal hides, is currently available in Mezritsh.
But the smooth-writing ballpoint, invented in 1938 by László Biró, will not arrive in Poland until 1942, which will be too late for most Mezritshers.
Lublin (2024) by Manya Wilkinson, her first novel since her 1991 debut Ocean Avenue, begins in media res, on August 28, 1907 (which is in fact 30 Av. 5667) outside the town of Mezritsh, now Międzyrzec Podlaski, in then Russian-occupied Poland.
Three c14 year old boys, Kiv, his cousin Ziv and a friend Elya, have left the town, essentially for the first time. They've been sent by Kiv's Uncle, Velvel Goldfarb, with a large case of 480 pigs-bristle paintbrushes to the town of Lublin, where they are to sell them.
Each of the boys is very different in character, Elya the most excited for the journey as he sees it has is route to becoming a merchant, and escaping from the lower social class into which he was born and ultimately to America; Kiva highly religious; and Ziv a Marxist agitator in theory, if rather lazy in practice.
According to Elya, Mezritsh employs three thousand bristleworkers, which is half of all the bristle-workers in Russia and Poland combined. 'Isn't that impressive? Aren't you proud? The Uncle produces beautiful brushes, does he not?'
‘The Uncle doesn't produce anything’, Ziv scowls. ‘His ill-paid workers produce the brushes he sells.'
'Without Adoshem, there would be no brushes, Kiva adds unhelpfully.’
In Elya's optimistic view the journey should not take long - Lublin is 102km south of Mezritsh so he estimates that at 6 km/h and 8 hours per day, it should take two, or perhaps three days. But he doesn't count on the (lack of) pace of his somewhat less motivated colleagues nor on the rather poor quality of the map that has been sketched for them. Ziv is no help, and Kiva is far more familiar with the Holy Land in Biblical times that their immediate surroundings. and the map they have reads more like an allegory than real: Village of Lakes; the Village of No Lakes; Russian Town, a dangerous place for Jews; Prune Town, the home of the flakiest crescent pastry; Prayer Town, where men and women walk on separate sides of the street; the Village of Girls, full of beautiful and available young women; the Village of the Dead, so called because no one has ever sold anything there; and the Village of Fools, where a merchant can sell anything.
And having left the (perceived) safety of their Jewish enclave, they are journeying through hostile territory with dangers real and perceived - Cossacks fresh from Pogroms elswhere, landowners and their hostile stewards, Russian soldiers who might forcibly conscript them for the Tsar's army, and others who might force them to convert.
They are three fourteen year old boys, so there is plenty of horseplay en route and Elya combines his business aspirations with a repetoire of jokes, some of which are crude laugh-out-loud humour, but most of which contain a subtle and dark underlying message, this based on the 1905 Odessa pogrom:
‘A young lad,’ says Elya, who perished in the Odessa pogrom, goes up to Gan Eden where he meets Adoshem and tells him a vitz. Not just any vitz. A pogrom vitz. But Adoshem is not amused.
“That’s not funny,” Adoshem says.
“I guess you had to be there,”replies the lad.’
The narrative voice is distinctive, one that gives us a wider perspective on the scene, commenting on events back in their town, elsewhere in the world (as they first camp for the night, it reminds us that at the same time Baden-Powell is trying his first Scout camp on Brownsea Island) and also things that will happen in the future. The quote that opens my review is one effective example, and there is a particularly striking passage where they, almost in something of a dream, stumble across a wedding party to which they get invited; the narrator then tells us (in parentheses) the ultimate fate of each character - some dying of natural causes, but others, particularly the children, who will die in the horrors that await this part of the world in 30-35 years time - between the invention of the Biro and its arrival in the area.
An impressive work: a wonderful recreation of a time and place, and simultaneously comically entertaining and devastating; and a fitting read to have begun on Holocaust Memorial Day, particularly in the light of what is happening in 2025.
Extract
here
Nominations
The Wingate Prize judges said:
On the surface, Manya Wilkinson’s Lublin looks like a simple coming-of-age novel as Elya, Ziv and Kiva set off from their village towards Lublin with a suitcase full of brushes to sell. Their adventures are both heartwarming and dark, absolutely their own but also stitched into a tapestry of persecution and survival. The traditions of Yiddish narrative combine with absolutely modern techniques to create a pure, compelling, original book.
The publisher - And Other Stories (in the UK & US)
And Other Stories publishes mainly contemporary writing, including many translations. We select carefully and hope you will agree that the books are good, make you think and able to last the test of time. We aim to push people’s reading limits and help them discover authors of adventurous and inspiring writing. And we want to open up publishing so that from the outside it doesn’t look like some posh freemasonry. For example, as we said in this piece in The Guardian, we think more of the English publishing industry should move out of London, Oxford and their environs. In 2017 we moved our main office out of the South-East to Sheffield and found such a warm welcome.
And Other Stories is readers, editors, writers, translators and subscribers. While our books are distributed widely through bookshops, it’s our subscribers’ support that give us the confidence to publish what we do.
Winner of the 2025 Hawthornden Prize for Literature - for a work of “imaginative literature”
Winner of the 2025 RSL Encore Award for best second novel.
Longlisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and Canada, dedicated to supporting small presses for their on-going commitment to work of high literary merit.
A crude version of the ballpoint pen, used only to mark rough surfaces such as animal hides, is currently available in Mezritsh.
But the smooth-writing ballpoint, invented in 1938 by László Biró, will not arrive in Poland until 1942, which will be too late for most Mezritshers.
Lublin (2024) by Manya Wilkinson, her first novel since her 1991 debut Ocean Avenue, begins in media res, on August 28, 1907 (which is in fact 30 Av. 5667) outside the town of Mezritsh, now Międzyrzec Podlaski, in then Russian-occupied Poland.
Three c14 year old boys, Kiv, his cousin Ziv and a friend Elya, have left the town, essentially for the first time. They've been sent by Kiv's Uncle, Velvel Goldfarb, with a large case of 480 pigs-bristle paintbrushes to the town of Lublin, where they are to sell them.
Each of the boys is very different in character, Elya the most excited for the journey as he sees it has is route to becoming a merchant, and escaping from the lower social class into which he was born and ultimately to America; Kiva highly religious; and Ziv a Marxist agitator in theory, if rather lazy in practice.
According to Elya, Mezritsh employs three thousand bristleworkers, which is half of all the bristle-workers in Russia and Poland combined. 'Isn't that impressive? Aren't you proud? The Uncle produces beautiful brushes, does he not?'
‘The Uncle doesn't produce anything’, Ziv scowls. ‘His ill-paid workers produce the brushes he sells.'
'Without Adoshem, there would be no brushes, Kiva adds unhelpfully.’
In Elya's optimistic view the journey should not take long - Lublin is 102km south of Mezritsh so he estimates that at 6 km/h and 8 hours per day, it should take two, or perhaps three days. But he doesn't count on the (lack of) pace of his somewhat less motivated colleagues nor on the rather poor quality of the map that has been sketched for them. Ziv is no help, and Kiva is far more familiar with the Holy Land in Biblical times that their immediate surroundings. and the map they have reads more like an allegory than real: Village of Lakes; the Village of No Lakes; Russian Town, a dangerous place for Jews; Prune Town, the home of the flakiest crescent pastry; Prayer Town, where men and women walk on separate sides of the street; the Village of Girls, full of beautiful and available young women; the Village of the Dead, so called because no one has ever sold anything there; and the Village of Fools, where a merchant can sell anything.
And having left the (perceived) safety of their Jewish enclave, they are journeying through hostile territory with dangers real and perceived - Cossacks fresh from Pogroms elswhere, landowners and their hostile stewards, Russian soldiers who might forcibly conscript them for the Tsar's army, and others who might force them to convert.
They are three fourteen year old boys, so there is plenty of horseplay en route and Elya combines his business aspirations with a repetoire of jokes, some of which are crude laugh-out-loud humour, but most of which contain a subtle and dark underlying message, this based on the 1905 Odessa pogrom:
‘A young lad,’ says Elya, who perished in the Odessa pogrom, goes up to Gan Eden where he meets Adoshem and tells him a vitz. Not just any vitz. A pogrom vitz. But Adoshem is not amused.
“That’s not funny,” Adoshem says.
“I guess you had to be there,”replies the lad.’
The narrative voice is distinctive, one that gives us a wider perspective on the scene, commenting on events back in their town, elsewhere in the world (as they first camp for the night, it reminds us that at the same time Baden-Powell is trying his first Scout camp on Brownsea Island) and also things that will happen in the future. The quote that opens my review is one effective example, and there is a particularly striking passage where they, almost in something of a dream, stumble across a wedding party to which they get invited; the narrator then tells us (in parentheses) the ultimate fate of each character - some dying of natural causes, but others, particularly the children, who will die in the horrors that await this part of the world in 30-35 years time - between the invention of the Biro and its arrival in the area.
An impressive work: a wonderful recreation of a time and place, and simultaneously comically entertaining and devastating; and a fitting read to have begun on Holocaust Memorial Day, particularly in the light of what is happening in 2025.
Extract
here
Nominations
The Wingate Prize judges said:
On the surface, Manya Wilkinson’s Lublin looks like a simple coming-of-age novel as Elya, Ziv and Kiva set off from their village towards Lublin with a suitcase full of brushes to sell. Their adventures are both heartwarming and dark, absolutely their own but also stitched into a tapestry of persecution and survival. The traditions of Yiddish narrative combine with absolutely modern techniques to create a pure, compelling, original book.
The publisher - And Other Stories (in the UK & US)
And Other Stories publishes mainly contemporary writing, including many translations. We select carefully and hope you will agree that the books are good, make you think and able to last the test of time. We aim to push people’s reading limits and help them discover authors of adventurous and inspiring writing. And we want to open up publishing so that from the outside it doesn’t look like some posh freemasonry. For example, as we said in this piece in The Guardian, we think more of the English publishing industry should move out of London, Oxford and their environs. In 2017 we moved our main office out of the South-East to Sheffield and found such a warm welcome.
And Other Stories is readers, editors, writers, translators and subscribers. While our books are distributed widely through bookshops, it’s our subscribers’ support that give us the confidence to publish what we do.
May 6, 2024
Three young boys set off for Lublin to sell brushes at the market. The leader, Elya, is no-nonsense (except when he’s telling jokes that nobody laughs at), he loves commerce and dreams of being a successful merchant. Tagging (forced) along are the cousins Kiva and Ziv. Kiva, devout and pious, is from a well-off family and unaccustomed to life on the road, frequently stopping to pray over this and that. And every rag tag group has a troublemaker: Ziv dreams of taking down the man and freeing exploited workers from their toils.
There’s a real Stand-By-Me feel to this journey as the boys punch, kick, fight and make up, tell jokes, tell stories, and find themselves in several precarious situations. But, of course this isn’t 1950’s Oregon and the boys are evading forces much eviler than a pack of older brothers and their menacing friends. This is 1907 in Eastern Europe (then The Pale of Settlement) and these young boys are Jewish.
There’s a (often heavy handed) sense of foreboding throughout and despite the many jokes and tomfoolery, we are told (and we know) that the future is not bright. Wilkinson balances the humor with the bleak insights into what is to come, never lingering too long on either side.
There’s a real Stand-By-Me feel to this journey as the boys punch, kick, fight and make up, tell jokes, tell stories, and find themselves in several precarious situations. But, of course this isn’t 1950’s Oregon and the boys are evading forces much eviler than a pack of older brothers and their menacing friends. This is 1907 in Eastern Europe (then The Pale of Settlement) and these young boys are Jewish.
There’s a (often heavy handed) sense of foreboding throughout and despite the many jokes and tomfoolery, we are told (and we know) that the future is not bright. Wilkinson balances the humor with the bleak insights into what is to come, never lingering too long on either side.
September 25, 2024
brilantně napsané vyprávění o tom, jak se tři kluci (pletichářský snílek, zbožný mazánek a mladý protokomunista, který sice miluje pracující lid, ale nesnáší práci) vydají na nekonečnou (až symbolickou) cestu na trhy do Lublinu. židovské vtipy, trocha jidiš, věcně ironické a přitom nenápadné vsuvky z dnešní perspektivy, popisy reálné krajiny a nereálných snů, vhled do života v Ruském Polsku kolem roku 1906 included.
originální, čtivý a hlavně přesvědčivý (konečně zas „neautofikční“!) příběh, jaký jsem už dlouho nečetla – navíc od autorky, která má ve svých 76 letech kromě téhle knížky na kontě jenom debut z devadesátek a několik povídek a která tímhle románem strčila do kapsy i Cestu Cormaca McCarthyho.
pečlivá redakční práce a pěkné vydání sheffieldského nakladatelství And Other Stories je už prostě klasický bonus.
originální, čtivý a hlavně přesvědčivý (konečně zas „neautofikční“!) příběh, jaký jsem už dlouho nečetla – navíc od autorky, která má ve svých 76 letech kromě téhle knížky na kontě jenom debut z devadesátek a několik povídek a která tímhle románem strčila do kapsy i Cestu Cormaca McCarthyho.
pečlivá redakční práce a pěkné vydání sheffieldského nakladatelství And Other Stories je už prostě klasický bonus.
January 6, 2025
A modern fable; dark, funny, mystical. A masterpiece.
February 13, 2025
Long-listed for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness prize for US and Canada.
I am sure that my distaste for this book comes partly from actual events happening in my country at this time in 2025. Told somewhat in the tone of a fable, the story of 3 young men traveling to the eponymous town of Lublin is filled with surreal happenings, black humor and physically repulsive descriptions. Is this what they call POST postmodern?
I am sure that my distaste for this book comes partly from actual events happening in my country at this time in 2025. Told somewhat in the tone of a fable, the story of 3 young men traveling to the eponymous town of Lublin is filled with surreal happenings, black humor and physically repulsive descriptions. Is this what they call POST postmodern?
August 24, 2024
Jewish author, Manya Wilkinson, takes the reader back to the early 1900s to the Pale of Settlement. Three Jewish teenaged boys begin a journey towards the illusive “Lublin”, seeking to make their fortune selling brushes and leaving behind all that is familiar to them. We are drawn into their world, into their superstitions, and into their hopes for a better future as they move through the countryside, hoping to fulfil their dreams despite the dangers that threaten them. What makes their story so enchanting is the banter between the three boys and, especially, the sprinkling of Yiddish that features so prominently in their dialogue and in the stories they tell. Despite the humour, the reader senses they are moving within the darkness of the world around them, which the author portrays with subtlety as she steers us to the climatic end of their journey.
November 4, 2024
THIS BOOK WAS REALLY GOOD...i loved it!! i love love loveeee the prose, it was so beautiful and evocative and painted really affecting imagery of life in the pale in the early 20th century. really amazing home scenes, the scenes on the road, in the shtetl, etc. one that really got me was the image of elya's mother klara leaning over to try and put out a fire on the stove as the angel of death passed by her husband's room.
i also loved the tone and the tropes, very clearly taking from sholem aleichem in a way i found SUPER fun: the three boys are such jewish archetypes (a businessman, a radical marxist, and a yeshiva boy), it was a dark humor that was very sholem aleichem-inspired (just jewish kind of humor in general), and the narrator! ahh the narrator <3 an omniscient narrator that can comment both on the goings-ons of the story as well as comment retrospectively with the knowledge of a someone living post-holocaust. i especially liked the scene of the wedding where people were dancing and crying and living traditional lives out in the open, but the narration would interject to tell me that one of those people died of gas inhalation, or firing squad, or in a cattle car. really powerful and very well used, it could have gotten tiring but it really never did.
the humor was great and i LOVED how much yiddish was in it! i didn't understand all the yiddish but you kind of get it through context clues. elya's jokes were amazing. the boys really did act like boys. the end of the story was fittingly dark, the whole story was..mwah. chef's kiss. i found this book while perusing my library's libby catalog and i'm so glad i stumbled across it because i don't know how i would have found it otherwise. just such a smartly crafted story that showed off some serious research behind it.
i also loved the tone and the tropes, very clearly taking from sholem aleichem in a way i found SUPER fun: the three boys are such jewish archetypes (a businessman, a radical marxist, and a yeshiva boy), it was a dark humor that was very sholem aleichem-inspired (just jewish kind of humor in general), and the narrator! ahh the narrator <3 an omniscient narrator that can comment both on the goings-ons of the story as well as comment retrospectively with the knowledge of a someone living post-holocaust. i especially liked the scene of the wedding where people were dancing and crying and living traditional lives out in the open, but the narration would interject to tell me that one of those people died of gas inhalation, or firing squad, or in a cattle car. really powerful and very well used, it could have gotten tiring but it really never did.
the humor was great and i LOVED how much yiddish was in it! i didn't understand all the yiddish but you kind of get it through context clues. elya's jokes were amazing. the boys really did act like boys. the end of the story was fittingly dark, the whole story was..mwah. chef's kiss. i found this book while perusing my library's libby catalog and i'm so glad i stumbled across it because i don't know how i would have found it otherwise. just such a smartly crafted story that showed off some serious research behind it.
June 14, 2024
4.5⭐️ rounded down!!
really incredible book!!! Wilkinson’s writing is completely absorbing as a tale of 3 young jewish teens travelling to a ‘nearby’ Lublin takes on many twists and turns. there’s an extraordinary amount of depth to this story that weaves in and out of a very boyish coming-of-age tale, creating some extremely heavy moments of foreboding never quite letting you completely relax. Elya, Kiva & Ziv are all really great characters, flawed in ways you’d expect teens just stepping into the real world to be, yet keeping a genuine innocence & playfulness that really does make you care for them.
this innocence that comes in waves is probably the most gut-wrenching part of this story. the undertones of violent anti-semitism slowly creep out more & more during the 3 boys’ journey (setting is poland 1907) leaves a pretty helpless feeling for the reader, obviously knowing the history of where this all led up to. it’s what makes the books playful, boyish/jewish humour stick out so prominently. sometimes it makes you laugh, but you question do you really want to be laughing, knowing it’s just a minor distraction from the pain you know these characters will face.
powerful in any aspect, the 3 boys’ coming-of-age tale is powerful enough with great writing to just simply enjoy, but the underlying horror and nervy unknowing is where the book really hits you whilst reading!
reluctant to 5⭐️ simply due to the ending moving a bit fast, but i also do think this book would be extremely hard to right a perfect ending for? maybe i will come back and review again at a later date, but still definitely worth a read!!
really incredible book!!! Wilkinson’s writing is completely absorbing as a tale of 3 young jewish teens travelling to a ‘nearby’ Lublin takes on many twists and turns. there’s an extraordinary amount of depth to this story that weaves in and out of a very boyish coming-of-age tale, creating some extremely heavy moments of foreboding never quite letting you completely relax. Elya, Kiva & Ziv are all really great characters, flawed in ways you’d expect teens just stepping into the real world to be, yet keeping a genuine innocence & playfulness that really does make you care for them.
this innocence that comes in waves is probably the most gut-wrenching part of this story. the undertones of violent anti-semitism slowly creep out more & more during the 3 boys’ journey (setting is poland 1907) leaves a pretty helpless feeling for the reader, obviously knowing the history of where this all led up to. it’s what makes the books playful, boyish/jewish humour stick out so prominently. sometimes it makes you laugh, but you question do you really want to be laughing, knowing it’s just a minor distraction from the pain you know these characters will face.
powerful in any aspect, the 3 boys’ coming-of-age tale is powerful enough with great writing to just simply enjoy, but the underlying horror and nervy unknowing is where the book really hits you whilst reading!
reluctant to 5⭐️ simply due to the ending moving a bit fast, but i also do think this book would be extremely hard to right a perfect ending for? maybe i will come back and review again at a later date, but still definitely worth a read!!
June 21, 2025
Astonishing. A funny, devastating journey to nowhere, like Bashevis Singer collaborating with Beckett on a Twilight Zone episode. Jewish Excellence. And I laughed out loud at every farkakteh joke Elya makes.
April 30, 2024
3.5 stars
August 9, 2024
4.5 stars. This one is going to haunt me.
November 8, 2024
100% my thing—Old World setting and humor and sensibility, told in a jauntily postmodern way.
August 2, 2024
I had a more difficult time with this book than I thought I would, likely because of my own emotional state. I finished the book the morning of Netanyahu’s address to U.S. Congress, where I spent the day barricaded in my Capitol Hill office with road closures and increased police presence outside.
This slight novel doesn’t stay in its lane, as it were, when it comes to a chronological depiction of Jewish history, and I guess I’m not either. The whimsical Ashkenazi folkloric style—to crib from an easy example, “Fiddler on the Roof,” it’s “laden with happiness and tears”—left me feeling more wounded than anything. I grieved these three young boys, Jewish babes who left home and embraced a foreshadowing narrative.
One wonders if thirteen-year-olds were regularly assumed to be adept at map-reading in early 20th century Poland, where it seems the merchant Vevel sent three boys out, including his own kin, without a second thought. Elya is the budding salesman, tasked with selling brushes in the nearby city of Lublin. He’s an ambitious teen whose fate is the murkiest of the three (though Wilkinson assures us his dreams won’t be met.) Ziv is almost his opposite—his passion is for socialism, though he’s much mischievous than Elya, too. Kiva is the yeshiva bocher, a frail, religious boy who knows much more about ritual and texts than he does about the waking world.
Between the fairytale-esque names of towns and the three boys unwittingly taking a wrong turn, leading them to wader in a fruitless search, there’s a sense of unreality at play. We know, from the cadence of the writing, that the strictures of plot and destination have come undone. It’s a bit like THE VASTER WILDS by Lauren Groff, where young characters ramble through the wilderness in search of a better future, except it didn’t feel as proscribed. Groff was trying to juxtapose a moral message whereas Wilkinson was haunted by what she uncovered of banal cruelties. Or at least I was haunted.
Elya’s turn to Yiddish humor tried to make the best of bad situations. ( “A young lad…who perished in the Odessa pogrom, goes up to Gan Eden where he meets Adoshem and tells him a vitz. Not just any vitz. A pogrom vitz. But Adoshem is not amused. ‘That’s not funny,’ Adoshem says. ‘I guess you had to be there,’ replies the lad.”) Wilkinson’s most direct grappling with the Holocaust comes when she discloses the fates of those celebrating a wedding. What is the point of all this? The easiest answer might be that for most of Jewish history, we couldn’t stop the tragedy. We could only live in the moment.
Elya, Ziv and Kiva’s journeys ended in character-appropriate ways for three young people who would never see home again. But between the antisemitism and the terrifying health realities of early 20th century Poland, there didn’t seem much to celebrate along the way. Sometimes I clung to these personalities, but I also often felt adrift myself.
I don’t think I can offer much by way of an objective review, but I’m grateful to Eric Karl Anderson of BookTube for inadvertently recommending this to me! It’s not yet covered on the Jewish Book Council website, but I hope it will be soon.
This slight novel doesn’t stay in its lane, as it were, when it comes to a chronological depiction of Jewish history, and I guess I’m not either. The whimsical Ashkenazi folkloric style—to crib from an easy example, “Fiddler on the Roof,” it’s “laden with happiness and tears”—left me feeling more wounded than anything. I grieved these three young boys, Jewish babes who left home and embraced a foreshadowing narrative.
One wonders if thirteen-year-olds were regularly assumed to be adept at map-reading in early 20th century Poland, where it seems the merchant Vevel sent three boys out, including his own kin, without a second thought. Elya is the budding salesman, tasked with selling brushes in the nearby city of Lublin. He’s an ambitious teen whose fate is the murkiest of the three (though Wilkinson assures us his dreams won’t be met.) Ziv is almost his opposite—his passion is for socialism, though he’s much mischievous than Elya, too. Kiva is the yeshiva bocher, a frail, religious boy who knows much more about ritual and texts than he does about the waking world.
Between the fairytale-esque names of towns and the three boys unwittingly taking a wrong turn, leading them to wader in a fruitless search, there’s a sense of unreality at play. We know, from the cadence of the writing, that the strictures of plot and destination have come undone. It’s a bit like THE VASTER WILDS by Lauren Groff, where young characters ramble through the wilderness in search of a better future, except it didn’t feel as proscribed. Groff was trying to juxtapose a moral message whereas Wilkinson was haunted by what she uncovered of banal cruelties. Or at least I was haunted.
Elya’s turn to Yiddish humor tried to make the best of bad situations. ( “A young lad…who perished in the Odessa pogrom, goes up to Gan Eden where he meets Adoshem and tells him a vitz. Not just any vitz. A pogrom vitz. But Adoshem is not amused. ‘That’s not funny,’ Adoshem says. ‘I guess you had to be there,’ replies the lad.”) Wilkinson’s most direct grappling with the Holocaust comes when she discloses the fates of those celebrating a wedding. What is the point of all this? The easiest answer might be that for most of Jewish history, we couldn’t stop the tragedy. We could only live in the moment.
Elya, Ziv and Kiva’s journeys ended in character-appropriate ways for three young people who would never see home again. But between the antisemitism and the terrifying health realities of early 20th century Poland, there didn’t seem much to celebrate along the way. Sometimes I clung to these personalities, but I also often felt adrift myself.
I don’t think I can offer much by way of an objective review, but I’m grateful to Eric Karl Anderson of BookTube for inadvertently recommending this to me! It’s not yet covered on the Jewish Book Council website, but I hope it will be soon.
February 9, 2024
I chose to read this because my husband’s ancestors are from Mezritsh - the town in the Pale of Settlement where the three boys in the book set off on their “business trip” to Lublin in 1906 ( a year after our family safely arrived in the UK). It was fascinating to read of a place and a time familiar to me from studying family trees but of course it was also emotional. It begins as a sort of Yiddish Three Men in A Boat, full of jokes, pranks and mishaps. But soon the book has a chilling sense of foreboding - not just for what might happen to our heroes on this chaotic journey - but for what lies ahead for the entire community of Eastern European Jews in the next forty years but you cannot stop reading. It’s beautifully written, full of pathos, humour and humanity. It’s entertaining and enlightening and I highly recommend it.
November 21, 2025
Before being given this book, I had never heard of it, nor its author. With no discussion I could find about it online and no blurb on the back cover, I had no idea what to expect before I opened it for the first time. My expectations were neither low nor high, as I didn't know what to expect, and yet the book still managed to blow my expectations out of the water.
The story follows three adolescent Jewish boys in the early 20th century in Poland as they travel from their small hometown of Mezritsh to the town of Lublin in order to sell paintbrushes. The first of the boys is Elya, the de facto leader of the group and budding entrepreneur who wants, more than anything, to be a successful and wealthy merchant. The second is Kiva, a boy as devout to his religion as he is frail, and the third is Ziv, a rough lad who enjoys fighting, loves workers, and hates work.
The book is written in present tense (a stylistic choice I once disliked but have since come around on) and from a third-person omniscient narrator. This really works to not only connect the reader with the internal thoughts of the three main characters, but the state of the world at the time the story takes place. Wilkinson doesn't take a huge amount of time to describe the environments and scenery the boys encounter, nor does she include any big infodumps to contextualise things. It's all done in discreet, subtle ways. I, personally, don't know very much about this period of history, so I can't speak for its accuracy, but I felt like I learnt a lot just through the ways the characters spoke or thought about certain topics. The narrator also isn't just omniscient in that they know everything that is currently going on, they're also omniscient in that they know everything that will happen. For a few paragraphs at a time, the story will cut to the past or the future. The narrator knows what will happen to these characters after you close the book. There's one scene that sticks in my mind quite well, when a large group of characters are introduced and we are told exactly how each of them will die. It really compliments the overall themes I read of inevitability and dread - even a layman of history like myself knows that, not long after the book is set, the world becomes a very hard place for people like Elya, Kiva and Ziv, and yet we still hold out hope that everything will turn out okay, and that they'll each achieve their respective dreams.
The characters themselves are also great. All three of the boys are three-dimensional, and full people, while still being distinct enough to get a grasp on who they are within just a few pages of knowing them. Elya is eager and ambitious, and somewhat of a control freak, who really just wants people to like him - hence his penchant for bad jokes. Ziv is a young socialist, but it's unclear whether his love for the proletariat comes from a genuine care or just a desire to rebel - hence his nature for starting fights and relentlessly bullying Kiva. Kiva himself is probably the flattest of the three, but even he's well-written. A spoilt, sheltered kid who knows far more about ancient texts than the real world, and his knowledge doesn't do a lot to help him. The interactions between the characters are great, they really feel like teenagers (in a time before teenager was really a term) on a journey, struggling, arguing, wanting to go home, yet mostly staying friends (or at least something close to friends) throughout.
There's an almost helplessness to the story, and yet a lot of hope in there too. The characters have fun and make jokes, they don't revel in the oncoming sorrow, but the story itself does. It's a book about death, and misfortune, and yet it's rarely tearful or melodramatic - it's a story of three fairly regular kids who are going to die, like everyone, at some point. And in that juxtaposition Wilkinson creates an unease throughout the book, that makes the story endlessly gripping, making even the chapters where very little happens and very little progress is made (which is most chapters) feel engaging and interesting to read.
All that said, it's not a complete review without criticisms, and I do have some Lublin, albeit minor. The pacing was fairly consistently slow throughout the story, only to ramp up to a breakneck speed in the last few chapters. I felt that it worked due to the events of the chapters (which I won't spoil) but I can see how it would disrupt some readers' enjoyment. Additionally, despite the great character work, there were instances where it felt like Wilkinson was laying it on a bit too thick, with Ziv being a bit too mean to Kiva to the point of straining my suspension of disbelief, and Kiva being a bit too much of a pathetic pushover once or twice that made him seem like less of a character and more of an obstacle. But those events were few and far between, and I do want to emphasise how the rest of the book more than makes up for those.
Overall, Lublin is a fantastic novel, and one that I recommend to anyone, even if it doesn't sound like the type of story that would initially grab you. If I hadn't been given it by someone, it wouldn't have grabbed me either, if I'm being completely honest, but I'm so glad I gave it a try. Manya Wilkinson is definitely an author I will be reading more of in the future, should she release more work.
The story follows three adolescent Jewish boys in the early 20th century in Poland as they travel from their small hometown of Mezritsh to the town of Lublin in order to sell paintbrushes. The first of the boys is Elya, the de facto leader of the group and budding entrepreneur who wants, more than anything, to be a successful and wealthy merchant. The second is Kiva, a boy as devout to his religion as he is frail, and the third is Ziv, a rough lad who enjoys fighting, loves workers, and hates work.
The book is written in present tense (a stylistic choice I once disliked but have since come around on) and from a third-person omniscient narrator. This really works to not only connect the reader with the internal thoughts of the three main characters, but the state of the world at the time the story takes place. Wilkinson doesn't take a huge amount of time to describe the environments and scenery the boys encounter, nor does she include any big infodumps to contextualise things. It's all done in discreet, subtle ways. I, personally, don't know very much about this period of history, so I can't speak for its accuracy, but I felt like I learnt a lot just through the ways the characters spoke or thought about certain topics. The narrator also isn't just omniscient in that they know everything that is currently going on, they're also omniscient in that they know everything that will happen. For a few paragraphs at a time, the story will cut to the past or the future. The narrator knows what will happen to these characters after you close the book. There's one scene that sticks in my mind quite well, when a large group of characters are introduced and we are told exactly how each of them will die. It really compliments the overall themes I read of inevitability and dread - even a layman of history like myself knows that, not long after the book is set, the world becomes a very hard place for people like Elya, Kiva and Ziv, and yet we still hold out hope that everything will turn out okay, and that they'll each achieve their respective dreams.
The characters themselves are also great. All three of the boys are three-dimensional, and full people, while still being distinct enough to get a grasp on who they are within just a few pages of knowing them. Elya is eager and ambitious, and somewhat of a control freak, who really just wants people to like him - hence his penchant for bad jokes. Ziv is a young socialist, but it's unclear whether his love for the proletariat comes from a genuine care or just a desire to rebel - hence his nature for starting fights and relentlessly bullying Kiva. Kiva himself is probably the flattest of the three, but even he's well-written. A spoilt, sheltered kid who knows far more about ancient texts than the real world, and his knowledge doesn't do a lot to help him. The interactions between the characters are great, they really feel like teenagers (in a time before teenager was really a term) on a journey, struggling, arguing, wanting to go home, yet mostly staying friends (or at least something close to friends) throughout.
There's an almost helplessness to the story, and yet a lot of hope in there too. The characters have fun and make jokes, they don't revel in the oncoming sorrow, but the story itself does. It's a book about death, and misfortune, and yet it's rarely tearful or melodramatic - it's a story of three fairly regular kids who are going to die, like everyone, at some point. And in that juxtaposition Wilkinson creates an unease throughout the book, that makes the story endlessly gripping, making even the chapters where very little happens and very little progress is made (which is most chapters) feel engaging and interesting to read.
All that said, it's not a complete review without criticisms, and I do have some Lublin, albeit minor. The pacing was fairly consistently slow throughout the story, only to ramp up to a breakneck speed in the last few chapters. I felt that it worked due to the events of the chapters (which I won't spoil) but I can see how it would disrupt some readers' enjoyment. Additionally, despite the great character work, there were instances where it felt like Wilkinson was laying it on a bit too thick, with Ziv being a bit too mean to Kiva to the point of straining my suspension of disbelief, and Kiva being a bit too much of a pathetic pushover once or twice that made him seem like less of a character and more of an obstacle. But those events were few and far between, and I do want to emphasise how the rest of the book more than makes up for those.
Overall, Lublin is a fantastic novel, and one that I recommend to anyone, even if it doesn't sound like the type of story that would initially grab you. If I hadn't been given it by someone, it wouldn't have grabbed me either, if I'm being completely honest, but I'm so glad I gave it a try. Manya Wilkinson is definitely an author I will be reading more of in the future, should she release more work.
January 25, 2024
Walking for Godot … with better jokes than Beckett!
October 18, 2025
I wanted to like this, but I did not. Maybe because I am a snob who knows too much about Yiddish language, culture, and history for my own good. It seems like the author asked herself "what if there was a novel that took place in a shtetl?", read one history book, and then churned out this plodding novella about three boys on a surreal, meandering journey towards the city of Lublin to sell brushes. I did not enjoy the smarmy, omniscient narrator who is constantly pointing out how certain minor characters are going to die (i.e. murdered by various methods during the Holocaust) and mentioning historical events and inventions that the characters do not know about. Some of the jokes that Elya tells are funny or poignant, but they felt like part of a greater gimmick, wherein these boys in 1906 Poland are made to sound like Borscht Belt comedians (some of whom, to be fair, were once boys in Polish shtetls). My particular axe to grind has to do with the attempted use of Yiddish, which the author clearly does not know, but feels entitled to use nonsensically: mostly it's "Yinglish" curses ("farkakta", "drek", "what the shtup", etc.) but there are also random words that are spelled as if they were German, or not properly conjugated...and then there are wordplays in English that just don't make sense if we are to believe that the characters are speaking to each other in Yiddish (like when one tells another to "zip it," and then the omniscient narrator points out that the zipper has not appeared in Poland by this point in history). This is all to say that I did not really understand the point of this novel. It is not the first novel in English to have some creative take on shtetl life (see, for example, Everything is Illuminated, The Lost Shtetl, City of Laughter), but maybe this is the first to come out of the UK, so it seems more "novel" than it really is. But there are also plenty of Yiddish novels, many avilable in good English translations, about this time and place and culture by authors who lived there/then/thus, which I would recommend reading instead of Lublin. For a classic Yiddish travel novella, try Travels of Benjamin III. Or for something lesser known (and more recently published in English translation), maybe Tsilke the Wild, A Provincial Newspaper and Other Stories, or Dineh: An Autobiographical Novel.
July 6, 2024
A big disappointment.
Of course part of the problem is my intimate knowledge of both the political and cultural history which forms the context of this story. These 3 boys did not seem the credible to me for their place and time (Lublin, 1907). Their conversations seemed fake and stilted and too many inaccuracies that annoyed me. But that’s just me.
I can’t recommend it to people for whom those flaws are not relevant. The story itself is unfunny (the humor is an insult to Jewish jokes), uninteresting (teen boys acting stupid) and headed for a disastrous ending (duh!), so I am not really sure why other people loved this book so much. The writing is well crafted but it did not draw me in at all.
By contrast Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob is the exact opposite. Beautifully written a compelling and surprising story, and if I didn’t know she was a gentile, I would swear the author grew up in a Hasidishe home. The characters are frighteningly authentic and human, lots of laugh out loud stuff and I learned many new things about the period and place where my own ancestors come from! Not to mention the story itself is fascinating with lot’s of compelling twists and turns. The only downside is the book is huge so I still haven’t had time to finish it!
Another excellent Jewish historical novel I can recommend is Spirö’s Captivity. A totally different place and time but again it brought the period and people to life and told a funny, interesting and authentic story (with a cameo appearance by Jesus!).
Of course part of the problem is my intimate knowledge of both the political and cultural history which forms the context of this story. These 3 boys did not seem the credible to me for their place and time (Lublin, 1907). Their conversations seemed fake and stilted and too many inaccuracies that annoyed me. But that’s just me.
I can’t recommend it to people for whom those flaws are not relevant. The story itself is unfunny (the humor is an insult to Jewish jokes), uninteresting (teen boys acting stupid) and headed for a disastrous ending (duh!), so I am not really sure why other people loved this book so much. The writing is well crafted but it did not draw me in at all.
By contrast Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob is the exact opposite. Beautifully written a compelling and surprising story, and if I didn’t know she was a gentile, I would swear the author grew up in a Hasidishe home. The characters are frighteningly authentic and human, lots of laugh out loud stuff and I learned many new things about the period and place where my own ancestors come from! Not to mention the story itself is fascinating with lot’s of compelling twists and turns. The only downside is the book is huge so I still haven’t had time to finish it!
Another excellent Jewish historical novel I can recommend is Spirö’s Captivity. A totally different place and time but again it brought the period and people to life and told a funny, interesting and authentic story (with a cameo appearance by Jesus!).
April 3, 2024
"Lublin" is a charming tale that will appeal to readers who enjoy reading for its own sake, even when the story, much like our three central characters, goes nowhere in particular, yet dropping nuggets of creativity along the way.
The book is one of the latest batch from And Other Stories, and (for me) marks a return to the choice of literature that I had become used to from this publisher, after the misfire of "Split Tooth".
The basic premise is about three young friends - Elya, Kiva and Ziv - who set out on a hundred kilometre march to the village of Lublin (Poland) at the start of the last century where Elya hopes to make his reputation as a merchant by selling his family's brushes in the market (while avoiding roaming Cossack troops and those looking for conscripts for the Russian army).
During this 'Road to Godot' journey the three experience numerous Don Quixote moments during which Wilkinson skilfully and lovingly develops their individual characters. The reader cannot but find them endearing, each in their own very different way. Elya is the proud goal-orientated dreamer; Kiva the fragile and fervently religious son of a wealthy merchant, and Ziv the cynical atheist and would-be communist militant who provides the Sancho-Panza realism.
The book is one of the latest batch from And Other Stories, and (for me) marks a return to the choice of literature that I had become used to from this publisher, after the misfire of "Split Tooth".
The basic premise is about three young friends - Elya, Kiva and Ziv - who set out on a hundred kilometre march to the village of Lublin (Poland) at the start of the last century where Elya hopes to make his reputation as a merchant by selling his family's brushes in the market (while avoiding roaming Cossack troops and those looking for conscripts for the Russian army).
During this 'Road to Godot' journey the three experience numerous Don Quixote moments during which Wilkinson skilfully and lovingly develops their individual characters. The reader cannot but find them endearing, each in their own very different way. Elya is the proud goal-orientated dreamer; Kiva the fragile and fervently religious son of a wealthy merchant, and Ziv the cynical atheist and would-be communist militant who provides the Sancho-Panza realism.
April 9, 2024
Very moving book, beautifully written and utterly compelling throughout. All 3 boys were fantastic characters and the author brought them to life perfectly. Real sense of time and place and I imagine a lot of research went into it. Elya's jokes were brilliantly told. Hugely recommended.
I did have a couple of issues with the book. Silly point but I do suspect that they would have known the way to Lublin. This was a time when people were always talking to other travellers on the road - they simply wouldn't have got that far away.
Pretty much every local they meet is a wrong'un, and presumably anti-Semitic. Of course anti-Semitism was rife at the time but not as black and white, I suspect, as is presented in the book.
Finally from more of a personal perspective, I didn't like the constant references to other character's future deaths. In 1905 far too many seemed to be described as dying in the future Holocaust. Many around at that time would have made it to the US or Britain. But more fundamentally, these people lived full lives. They would have had great moments, happy moments, notwithstanding their ultimate demise. To characterise them purely by their deaths seems, in my mind, slightly unfair to their memories.
I did have a couple of issues with the book. Silly point but I do suspect that they would have known the way to Lublin. This was a time when people were always talking to other travellers on the road - they simply wouldn't have got that far away.
Pretty much every local they meet is a wrong'un, and presumably anti-Semitic. Of course anti-Semitism was rife at the time but not as black and white, I suspect, as is presented in the book.
Finally from more of a personal perspective, I didn't like the constant references to other character's future deaths. In 1905 far too many seemed to be described as dying in the future Holocaust. Many around at that time would have made it to the US or Britain. But more fundamentally, these people lived full lives. They would have had great moments, happy moments, notwithstanding their ultimate demise. To characterise them purely by their deaths seems, in my mind, slightly unfair to their memories.
May 24, 2024
A very peculiar book. I think it got there in the end, but was quite close to crashing and burning at several points.
The story of three Jewish boys who set out on a journey through the countryside to sell brushes. As they learn about the world outside their tiny village, so we learn about the obstacles and violence that lies in store for them and their community.
One thing I found striking was how the setting emerged out of the gloom, with some pieces of the puzzle only falling into place towards the end of the book. The murkiness of the early 20th century eastern European countryside (sometimes positively medieval in its superstition and limited horizons) becomes our own.
Wilkinson also uses some interesting narrative devices that keep us on our toes, like leaping ahead in time to briefly spy the fate of incidental characters.
I've never read a book where so many knock-knock type jokes are narrated. This did insert a certain energy to what risked being a tedious journey story, but I found it a bit wearing.
Hard to place as a genre. Kinda gave me the kind of eccentric and ADHD vibes I get from Wes Anderson films. I'll let you decide if that's a compliment!
The story of three Jewish boys who set out on a journey through the countryside to sell brushes. As they learn about the world outside their tiny village, so we learn about the obstacles and violence that lies in store for them and their community.
One thing I found striking was how the setting emerged out of the gloom, with some pieces of the puzzle only falling into place towards the end of the book. The murkiness of the early 20th century eastern European countryside (sometimes positively medieval in its superstition and limited horizons) becomes our own.
Wilkinson also uses some interesting narrative devices that keep us on our toes, like leaping ahead in time to briefly spy the fate of incidental characters.
I've never read a book where so many knock-knock type jokes are narrated. This did insert a certain energy to what risked being a tedious journey story, but I found it a bit wearing.
Hard to place as a genre. Kinda gave me the kind of eccentric and ADHD vibes I get from Wes Anderson films. I'll let you decide if that's a compliment!
August 16, 2024
Discover the locations in the novel here
A very unique story of three young boys who leave their village Lublin in Poland and head to the big city to do business. There's no story as such, but more of an observation of life, jokes, friendships and more.
It's also a keen observation of political life at the time - there are soldiers looking to sign up people to the Russian army.
There's lots of layers to this that I don't think I fully appreciated - Jewish cultural references and life in Poland and the surrounding area at the time.
Unique and quirky with a soft heart at its core.
December 27, 2024
Lublin describes a magical, mystical, impossible journey from a poor, small Polish town called Mezritsh, to Lublin--a bigger city with much to offer. Three young Jewish boys--Elya, Kiva, and Ziv, set out on foot to make their way to Lublin, hoping to become rich and experience a better life. Or so they hope.
This short but searing tale of naiveté, luck, dreams, longing, foolishness, horror, illness, and misfortune follows the trio as they walk and walk, seemingly never getting closer to Lublin. As is true in such tales, the boys encounter serious obstacles such as Russian soldiers, lack of food and water, bad weather, faulty directions, thieves, illness and injury, and other missteps or sidetracks that wear away at their resolve. Their wills remain strong, but the circuitous and challenging journey winds back toward Mezritsh in a climactic ending that well fits this tale.
This short but searing tale of naiveté, luck, dreams, longing, foolishness, horror, illness, and misfortune follows the trio as they walk and walk, seemingly never getting closer to Lublin. As is true in such tales, the boys encounter serious obstacles such as Russian soldiers, lack of food and water, bad weather, faulty directions, thieves, illness and injury, and other missteps or sidetracks that wear away at their resolve. Their wills remain strong, but the circuitous and challenging journey winds back toward Mezritsh in a climactic ending that well fits this tale.
January 2, 2024
Really enjoyable read. An allegorical road trip, a caper, an odyssey of discovery for three lads in 1906 Poland. Littered with jokes - some great great and some bad great - and humour and also with pathos and foreboding. The foreboding often appears via brief, tangential insights into distant futures inserted into otherwise benign ordinary scenes. Making it all the more chilling. The pace and prose are great and the blending of the personal with the macro geopolitical and historical context is perfect. Great book.
September 28, 2024
This novel is an absolute delight to read with prose that gallop along as lively as the three Jewish teenage boys on their journey. Set in Poland in 1907 there are lots of general historical nuggets as well as Jewish history and stories embedded in the telling of the lads' walk. Like the boys, the book starts off jauntily and with much humour. As they begin to tire and the dread creeps in we get the idea that things are unlikely to go well.....And then: Oooof! That ending hits like a punch in the gut.
July 9, 2025
I DNFed quickly. I saw a good review from a BookTuber I follow. I was hoping for an opportunity to learn more about Jewish history and culture. However, the story seems targeted to an audience already familiar with both. The humor was too adolescent for my taste. I felt I’d need to stop and google the slang/Jewish terms constantly if I was going to understand the story, and even then I’m not sure I’d see the nuances.
2 stars…it’s not necessarily a fair rating but I’m just not the right audience.
2 stars…it’s not necessarily a fair rating but I’m just not the right audience.
December 25, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyed! Great use of a narrator who can shift between the minds of the characters and interject with funny, interesting, or even heartbreaking past context or future happenings. The writing managed to capture the shift from excitement for the journey to the dread and exhausting they eventually find. Also I enjoyed how Wilkinson kept you from being totally comfortable, the whole time you knew something was coming and the ending was satisfying but devastating. Would recommend
January 13, 2024
This was a delightful surprise. A tale of three Jewish boys from the Pale of Settlement in the early 20th century are on a journey to make their fortune in the wondrous Polish city of Lublin.
This is a parable full of metaphor and sprinkled at random with sharp reminders of the future that is coming.
An enjoyable and thought provoking read.
This is a parable full of metaphor and sprinkled at random with sharp reminders of the future that is coming.
An enjoyable and thought provoking read.
April 28, 2025
Lublin is a fascinating and engrossing tale, full of Jewish humor, history, and culture. Three boys, the main characters, each represent different threads of Jewish life, the pious, the revolutionary, and the mercantile. How they end up, given Jewish history, should not be surprising; but how they get there is thoroughly engaging.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews