Chaim Grade and the Rediscovery of ‘The Last Great Yiddish Novel’
Hosted By: My Jewish Learning
Chaim Grade was one of Yiddish literature’s leading 20th century authors. To call the publication of his latest book “long-awaited” is an understatement.
Grade died in 1982, but an English translation of one of his previously unfinished masterpieces, a 600-plus-page novel set in 1930s Lithuania, was just published.
How did that happen? It’s a story of family intrigue, literary detective work and dogged creativity on the part of the book’s translator and editors.
Join leading cultural critic Adam Kirsch, legendary Jewish editor Altie Karper and editor Todd Portnowitz — who edited the translation of “Sons and Daughters,” the new-old Grade work — for an online conversation about the book’s publication and its place in Yiddish literary history.
In his introduction to the book, Kirsch calls it “quite probably the last great Yiddish novel.” The epic saga involves a Lithuanian rabbi who witnesses his children leave the fold to explore secular lives across Europe and in the fledging state of Israel. It’s an instantly classic tale of orthodoxy versus modernity, and the ways that struggle tightens and breaks family bonds.
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