The Fate of Yaakov Maggid

Code: The Fate of Yaakov Maggid
Category: Catalogue

UK & Ireland only

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Translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth

ISBN: 978-1-912545-360

Once again, the extraordinary storyteller, Ludovic Bruckstein, opens the door onto a lost world of Jewish history and lore in the central European Carpathian region, now parts of Hungary, Romania and Ukraine. Invoking the tales of a great maggid – a wandering storyteller within the East-European tradition of Hasidism - he weaves tales of wisdom and mystery which linger inside us long after the story has ended. Bruckstein's previous titles (The Trap, 2019 and With an Unopened Umbrella in the Pouring Rain, 2021) have gained him a growing audience of dedicated readers in the English-speaking world, where his work has been too-long absent. 

This edition comes complete with a fascinating glossary of terms and historical references compiled by the translator. 

Words of praise for Ludovic Bruckstein:

“And this, ultimately, is what Ludovic Bruckstein invites his readers to do in short stories that draw deeply from the wellsprings of his ancestral Hassidism and the lost cultural milieu of Unterlander Jewry: to recognise and reacquaint themselves with the miraculous that exists in the pious simplicity of humble everyday life.”

Alistair Ian Blyth, author and translator

Shining Examples of Yiddish Storytelling

"His evocations of Jewish life in the Carpathians. . . are comparable to those of I L Peretz and Sholem Aleichem in Poland and Russia. Like them, Bruckstein is a secular Maggid, a product of the Chasidic storytelling tradition, his cast of blacksmiths, porters, cabinet-makers, businessmen and schnorrers, remnants of a world on the brink of annihilation."

Mark Glanville, The Jewish Chronicle