The Book of Paradise A Yiddish Comic Novel

<b>“Electrifying…sparkles with Manger’s song and poetry, and is brilliantly layered with literary and folkloric references.” <i>— Tablet</i><br><br>“There is something joyous about Manger’s playful language.” <i>— The Jewish Chronicle</i><br><br>The raucously witty Yiddish classic about a Jewish Paradise afflicted by very human temptations and pains — a delightful new translation perfect for fans of Michael Chabon</b><br><br>Witty, playful and slyly profound, this<i> </i>story of a young angel expelled from Paradise is the only novel by one of the great Yiddish writers, which was written just before the outbreak of World War II.<br><br>As a result of a crafty trick, the expelled angel retains the memory of his previous life when he’s born as a Yiddish-fluent baby mortal on Earth. The humans around him plead for details of that other realm, but the Paradise of his mischievous stories is far from their expectations: a world of drunken angels, lewd patriarchs and the very same divisions and temptations that shape the human world.<br><br>Published here in a lively new translation by Robert Adler Peckerar, <i>The Book of Paradise</i> is a comic masterpiece from poet-satirist Itzik Manger that irreverently blurs the boundaries between ancient and modern and sacred and profane, where the <i>shtetl</i> is heaven, and heaven is the <i>shtetl</i>.