Biography & Memoir Books:

The Glatstein Chronicles

Click to share your rating 0 ratings (0.0/5.0 average) Thanks for your vote!

Format:

Paperback / softback
Unavailable
Sorry, this product is not currently available to order

Description

This seminal American work from the Yiddish literary canon, in a restored English edition, offers the luminous narrative of the author's journey home to his Polish birthplace In 1934, with World War II on the horizon, writer Jacob Glatstein (1896-1971) traveled from his home in America to his native Poland to visit his dying mother. One of the foremost Yiddish poets of the day, he used his journey as the basis for two highly autobiographical novellas (translated as The Glatstein Chronicles) in which he intertwines childhood memories with observations of growing anti-Semitism in Europe. Glatstein's accounts "stretch like a tightrope across a chasm," writes preeminent Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse in the Introduction. In Book One, "Homeward Bound," the narrator, Yash, recounts his voyage to his birthplace in Poland and the array of international travelers he meets along the way. Book Two, "Homecoming at Twilight," resumes after his mother's funeral and ends with Yash's impending return to the United States, a Jew with an American passport who recognizes the ominous history he is traversing. The Glatstein Chronicles is at once insightful reportage of the year after Hitler came to power, reflection by a leading intellectual on contemporary culture and events, and the closest thing we have to a memoir by the boy from Lublin, Poland, who became one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. ]]>

Author Biography

Jacob Glatstein arrived in America in 1914 and went on to publish twelve volumes of poetry, seven collections of essays and literary criticism, a wartime novel for teenagers, and the autobiographical novellas translated as The Glatstein Chronicles. Ruth Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. The late Norbert Guterman completed the first English translation of Book Two of The Glatstein Chronicles in 1962. Maier Deshell translated Book One. He is former editor of the Jewish Publication Society and translated (with Margaret Birstein) Yehoshua Perle's Everyday Jews: Scenes from a Vanished Life, also for the New Yiddish Library.
Release date Australia
November 12th, 2010
Audience
  • General (US: Trade)
Contributors
  • Edited by Ruth Wisse
  • Series edited by David G. Roskies
  • Translated by Maier Deshell
  • Translated by Norbert Guterman
Country of Publication
United States
Imprint
Yale University Press
Pages
432
Publisher
Yale University Press
Dimensions
140x208x29
ISBN-13
9780300095142
Product ID
3723662

Customer reviews

Nobody has reviewed this product yet. You could be the first!

Write a Review

Marketplace listings

There are no Marketplace listings available for this product currently.
Already own it? Create a free listing and pay just 9% commission when it sells!

Sell Yours Here

Help & options

Filed under...