Judith: A Tale of Love & Woe

by Miriam Karpilove, Jessica Kirzane (Translator)

Karpilove’s debut, an epistolary novel published when she was twenty-three, follows the tumultuous relationship between a small-town Jewish girl uprooted due to antisemitic violence and the dashing revolutionary who routinely disappoints her.

Genres: Jewish, Judaism, Fiction

146 pages, Paperback

Published January 16, 2022

Reviews

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasure to support small publishers such as Farlag, who do amazing work in sharing lesser-known authors to a wider background. I hope they publish more Yiddish women authors!

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book in letters set in early 1900s in Russia and then America. Originally published in 1911, this is a new English translation from the Yiddish by Jessica Kirzane in 2022.

Loved the drama of it all and the translators postscript really puts it all in historical context and discusses the importance of Karpiloves work in its feminist, Jewish radical stance. Definitely reading more by her.

[Shalom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I so wish I were able to read this book in Yiddish instead of translation. In English, it's hard to tell how good the writing is, whether it should count as "great literature". But it's a compelling story, all the more so because we hear only the letter writer's side of the events, and have to fill in the rest with our imagination.

It's also an extremely quick read, a bite-sized window into a lost world. I am grateful to the translator, Jessica Kirzane, and to Farlag Press, for bringing out this edition.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this short novel of letters from Judith to her love of her life, Joseph. It’s not just a love story that spans oceans, but a look at Jewish life at the end of the Russian Empire and during the mass migration to the US. Miriam Karpilove would probably be horrified to know that much if the antisemitism of her time has been revitalized in 2024. Her story is, unfortunately, a timeless one.