The Slaughterman's Daughter: A Novel

by Yaniv Iczkovits Narrated by Tovah Feldshuh

Overview

"If the Coen brothers ever ventured beyond the United States for their films, they would find ample material in this novel."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Occasionally a book comes along so fresh, strange, and original that it seems peerless, utterly unprecedented. This is one of those books."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

**Winner of the 2021 Wingate Literary Prize**
**Finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Awards, "Book Club Award"**
 
An irresistible, picaresque tale of two Jewish sisters in late-nineteenth-century Russia, The Slaughterman's Daughter is filled with “boundless imagination and a vibrant style” (David Grossman).
 
With her reputation as a vilde chaya (wild animal), Fanny Keismann isn't like the other women in her shtetl in the Pale of Settlement-certainly not her obedient and anxiety-ridden sister, Mende, whose “philosopher” of a husband, Zvi-Meir, has run off to Minsk, abandoning her and their two children.
 
As a young girl, Fanny felt an inexorable pull toward her father's profession of ritual slaughterer and, under his reluctant guidance, became a master with a knife. And though she long ago gave up that unsuitable profession-she's now the wife of a cheesemaker and a mother of five-Fanny still keeps the knife tied to her right leg. Which might come in handy when, heedless of the dangers facing a Jewish woman traveling alone in czarist Russia, she sets off to track down Zvi-Meir and bring him home, with the help of the mute and mysterious ferryman Zizek Breshov, an ex-soldier with his own sensational past.
 
Yaniv Iczkovits spins a family drama into a far-reaching comedy of errors that will pit the czar's army against the Russian secret police and threaten the very foundations of the Russian Empire. The Slaughterman's Daughter is a rollicking and unforgettable work of fiction.

Editorial Reviews

JULY 2021 - AudioFile

This gem of an audiobook combines Yaniv Iczkovits’s charming story and an exceptional narration by Tovah Feldshuh to create an experience listeners will relish. The audiobook transcends cultural boundaries and is one that listeners of all backgrounds will embrace and enjoy. Fanny Keismann, daughter of a Jewish ritual slaughterer, follows in her father’s footsteps, only to give up the unwomanly career to become a wife with five children. When Fanny’s husband abandons her, she embarks on a journey to locate him and bring him home. Feldshuh’s performance is stunning. She captures the humor, grace, and intensity of Fanny’s search, enhancing those traits by precisely defining the many characters Fanny encounters along the way and the dialogue among them. D.J.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

11/16/2020

In Israeli philosopher and novelist Iczkovits’s delightfully expansive tale (after Adam and Sophie), a Jewish woman goes to great lengths to help her older sister in 1894 Russia. Mende and her children have been abandoned by her husband, Zvi-Meir, in the town of Motal. Mende’s younger sister, Fanny, also a wife and mother, travels to Minsk, where Zvi-Meir has gone, to convince him to sign a writ of divorce so Mende can move on with her life. Fanny’s traveling companion is taciturn boatman Zizek Breshov. Their travels take a turn when a family of bandits tries to rob them. Fanny, trained in animal butchery by her slaughterman father, expertly wields the knife she keeps strapped to her leg, and they leave the family dead on the road. Investigating the murder, imperial secret police colonel Piotr Novak disguises himself as a Jew to find out more about his suspects, Fanny and Zizek. Iczkovits elevates this cat-and-mouse story into a sweeping narrative with trips down side roads that reveal the riveting backstories of major and minor characters. His observations about human nature, family dynamics, and the interplay between religion and politics come across as wise but never didactic. Ever entertaining, Iczkovits’s lively, transportive picaresque takes readers on a memorable ride. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

Kirkus Reviews "10 Fiction Books to Look for in 2021"
Thrillist "30 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2021"

“A story of great beauty and surprise. A necessary antidote for our times.” 
—Gary Shteyngart

“With boundless imagination and a vibrant style, Iczkovits delivers a heroine of unforgettable grit. He wields his pen with wit and panache. A remarkable and evocative read.”
—David Grossman

“Technicolor characters, echoes of Yiddish & Russian literature, dark humor, a feminist heroine, a rich evocation of a vanished world and sly commentary on relations between Jews and gentiles—from a brilliant shortlist, this superb novel was a worthy winner.” —A. D. Miller, Wingate Literary Prize judge

“Iczkovits explores the richness, complexity, and constant peril of Jewish life under the Russian Empire. [Fanny and Zizek] are convincingly drawn, particularly in their occasional doubts and irrationality, and as their stories unfold we observe that although lives are often shaped by history and circumstance, character and resolve can resist and transcend the status quo . . . It’s a genuine pleasure to see all of the different strands of the story come together in the final act. If the Coen brothers ever ventured beyond the United States for their films, they would find ample material in this novel . . . An ultimately hopeful search for small comforts and a modicum of justice in an absurd and immoral world.”
—Shay K. Azoulay, The New York Times Book Review
 
“Offbeat, picaresque . . . full of invention and surprises. Stories nest inside stories, like Russian dolls. Iczkovits mixes real history, fable, and the products of his imagination into an intoxicating, thoroughly enjoyable brew.” 
—Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times (London)
 
“Brilliant, sweeping . . . Filled with exquisitely drawn characters.” 
—Elaine Margolin, Times Literary Supplement

“Delightful . . . Technicolor characters, pathos, and humor are all wonderfully captured in a nimble translation from the Hebrew.” 
—The Economist (“Our books of the year”)

“Epic in scope and rich in exe­cu­tion, The Slaughterman’s Daugh­ter is a con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish mas­ter­piece . . . Tip­ping its streimel to the likes of Sholem Ale­ichem and I. L. Peretz, [it] could almost be mis­tak­en for a lost Yid­dish clas­sic. Hilar­i­ous, wise, and fre­net­ic.” —Bram Presser, Jewish Book Council

“A novel exploding with imagination and talent, and reflecting a familiarity with both the prosaic nitty-gritty that characterized life in the Jewish Pale of Settlement, and the sweeping historical forces that affected it . . . Fresh and original . . . Iczkovits [is] served by a superb translator.” 
—David B. Green, Haaretz
 
 “We were unanimous in our decision as judges that we loved this wonderful book, The Slaughterman’s Daughter. It is epic literature with an excellent translation. At the same time, it is also a fantastic, surprising romp through a really important part of Jewish history, with an amazingly unpredictable storyline . . . Funny, shocking, and entrancing.” —Rabbi Janner-Klausner, Wingate Literary Prize judge

“A uniquely impressive offering . . . The novel is at once a beautiful fable and a philosophical meditation on a people, their history, and their place in society . . . [Fanny’s] journey may have been sparked by her sister’s heartbreak, but it turns into a quest for her identity as a woman, as a mother, as a Jew, as a human being.” — Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, Washington Independent Review of Books

“Approaches history in a fabulist style reminiscent of Sholem Aleichem and his disciples . . . The folktale tradition evoked in the storytelling has an estimable history, but perhaps even more old-fashioned is this novel’s length and leisurely tempo . . . I appreciated the pace . . . Today it would be a quick drive to Minsk; once upon a time the trip was the stuff of epics.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“As fun as a literary novel about nineteenth-century Russia can get. Iczkovits possesses such a generous imagination that he makes a tale of village life into a sweeping description of Russian life.” –James Doyle, Bookmunch

“Suspenseful . . . The rich characters and vivid descriptions of Jewish and army life in those times make for an engaging novel.” —M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

“Compelling . . . One of its beauties is allowing us to see how one shtetl family’s marital problems end up having repercussions that will reach the highest echelons of state power . . . Orr Scharf’s translation is terrific, rendering a work of contemporary Israeli fiction with the narrative feel of a much earlier era.” —Howard Freedman, J, The Jewish News of Northern California

“Iczkovits draws on the conventions of black comedy, the picaresque, and the fable to tell the story of a quest packed with improbable characters and events [and] finds unexpected richness and strangeness in this familiar material . . . As in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ small disasters foretell the destruction of a world.” —Julia M. Klein, The Forward

“Occasionally a book comes along so fresh, strange, and original that it seems peerless, utterly unprecedented. This is one of those books. You might hear traces of Gogol or Isaac Babel in Iczkovits’ voice, but they’re only traces . . . Iczkovits is a superb talent, and this novel is a resounding success. As witty as it is wise, [The Slaughterman’s Daughter] is a profoundly moving caper through the Russian empire.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Iczkovits elevates this cat-and-mouse story into a sweeping narrative with trips down side roads that reveal the riveting backstories of major and minor characters. His observations about human nature, family dynamics, and the interplay between religion and politics come across as wise but never didactic. Ever entertaining, Iczkovits’s lively, transportive picaresque takes readers on a memorable ride.”
—Publishers Weekly 
 
“Full of fascinating historical detail. Iczkovits has done his research. But, best of all, is the writing. He is a born storyteller. The novel is packed with terrific characters . . . This is a book you will not want to put down. It’s full of energy, part farce, part adventure story. Iczkovits is clearly a talent to watch and The Slaughterman’s Daughter is the place to start.”
—David Herman, The Jewish Chronicle
 
“A bona fide masterpiece that is a sheer delight. Shot through with black humor and rich prose . . . By far the most unexpectedly entertaining and enjoyable book I read this year . . . An epic adventure in the spirit of Gogol . . . Encounters with madmen, bandits, and the Russian army serve to enhance what turns out to be a journey of near legendary proportions . . . Outrageously funny.” ”
—Noel Megahey, The Digital Fix 
 
“[F]lamboyant and exuberant, compassionate and emotionally complex, heartwarming and poignant. The human spirit triumphs over all.”
—Paul Burke, New Books Magazine
 
“A miraculous patchwork quilt of individual stories within stories told by different voices, [the] quest for justice is the master story: a feminist picaresque set in a landscape of visionary and intimate historical and physical detail.”
—George Szirtes
 
“Combine a thriller with a road story, throw in a page-turning adventure, a few fables, some ethical speculation, a Bildungsroman, and more than one love story, and you get this epic tale. It’s witty, wise, exciting, intriguing, sorrowful, joyous, and tender. Full of surprise, understanding, historic sweep, and more than a few murders, The Slaughterman’s Daughter keeps you deliciously poised on a keen and beguiling fictional knife-edge.”
—Gary Barwin
 
“An original take on the historical novel that recreates—with a shrewd but affectionate look back at a lost world—Jewish life in the Russian empire at the end of the nineteenth century. [C]haracterized by historical realism but also an element of fantasy, it is also worth noting the novel’s brilliant insights and its winning humor. A novel of unquestionable uniqueness.”
—Judges’ Committee, The Agnon Prize

JULY 2021 - AudioFile

This gem of an audiobook combines Yaniv Iczkovits’s charming story and an exceptional narration by Tovah Feldshuh to create an experience listeners will relish. The audiobook transcends cultural boundaries and is one that listeners of all backgrounds will embrace and enjoy. Fanny Keismann, daughter of a Jewish ritual slaughterer, follows in her father’s footsteps, only to give up the unwomanly career to become a wife with five children. When Fanny’s husband abandons her, she embarks on a journey to locate him and bring him home. Feldshuh’s performance is stunning. She captures the humor, grace, and intensity of Fanny’s search, enhancing those traits by precisely defining the many characters Fanny encounters along the way and the dialogue among them. D.J.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2020-09-16
A search for a missing husband goes wildly awry.

Occasionally a book comes along so fresh, strange, and original that it seems peerless, utterly unprecedented. This is one of those books. You might hear traces of Gogol or Isaac Babel in Iczkovits’ voice, but they’re only traces. The madcap plot is more or less as follows: Mende Speismann’s husband has taken off, leaving her, her two children, and her in-laws basically destitute. It’s the late 19th century, the Pale of Settlement, and when Mende’s sister, Fanny Keismann, takes off in search of the errant husband, nobody knows where she’s gone. The oblique note she leaves behind doesn’t clarify matters. Fanny is known in their tightknit, insular Jewish community as a vilde chaya—a wild animal—because, as a young girl, she learned to slaughter animals, which was not, to say the least, a typically feminine pastime. Iczkovits follows Fanny on her search for Mende’s husband, but he also describes Mende’s life back in Motal, and his sympathy for his women characters is profound. But there’s also an agent of the secret police, Piotr Novak, who becomes involved when a trail of dead bodies sprouts up in Fanny’s wake, as well as a pair of old soldiers who had been, as children, forcibly removed from their Jewish homes and compelled to serve. If occasionally Iczkovits’ superb humor slips too far into the slapstick, you’ll forgive him: He’s so compelling a storyteller he could be forgiven anything. Likewise, the passages that delve into Mende’s inner life are so textured and rich they can’t help but draw attention to the fact that Iczkovits never quite explicates Fanny’s own thoughts to an equal degree. But these are minor quibbles. Iczkovits is a superb talent, and this novel is a resounding success.

As witty as it is wise, Iczkovits’ novel is a profoundly moving caper through the Russian empire.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177456683
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/23/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I
 
Poor Esther Hirsch, Mende Speismann thinks, as she lies on her back and tucks the wrinkled clipping from Hamagid under the mattress. Three healthy fledglings she’s got? She said so herself. One hundred and fifty roubles in her pocket? At least! Not so shabby. Then why the rush to put an advert in the paper? Why give out her name and the name of her family so publicly? With that kind of money, one could hire a gentile investigator, a fearless brute who would pursue her Meir-Yankel and not give the man a moment’s peace, even in his dreams, and knock out all his teeth, save one for toothaches.
 
Mende pulls out the clipping again, careful not to move the shoulder on which her son, Yankele, is sleeping. She stretches slightly to relieve her cramped neck, which her daughter, Mirl, has been jabbing with her elbows. The heavy breathing of her inlaws, may they live long, drifts in from the next room. Soon, Mende knows, she must get up, light the stove, dress her children while they are still half-asleep, and serve them a bit of milk in a tin bowl with grains of spelt. They will complain about the stale taste, as they always do, and she will ask Rochaleh, her mother-in-law, for a teaspoon of sugar, just one for the children to share. And Rochaleh will look back at her with disapproval that stretches her wrinkled face and scold, “No sugar! Nit! The party is over!” But after a few moments she will sigh in resignation. Every morning, a single teaspoon of sugar is grudgingly brought out.
 
And what is it about this notice of the loss suffered by poor Esther Hirsch that has made Mende check and reread it constantly for the past fortnight?
 
Although she would never admit it, this advertisement gives her pleasure, as do the two others that ran in a previous issue of Hamagid (one entitled “A Cry for Help!” and the other “Urgent Appeal!”), and the dozens of other similar notices that keep coming, day after day, from across the Pale of Settlement. Women who have been left behind, women chained to a husbandless marriage, miserable women, schlimazel women abandoned by their husbands with deceitful assurances and charades. One husband leaves for America, die goldene medina, with promises to bring the family over to New York; another sails for Palestine to be burned by the sun; a man tells his wife he is going into town to learn a trade, only to be swept up in the intellectual circles of Odessa; a father swears to his daughters that he will come back with a hefty dowry and, all of a sudden, one hears that he is “kissing the mezuzahs” of Kiev bordellos. Mende knows that only fools find consolation in the knowledge that others suffer the same woes as they, and yet contentment steals over her as she reads, overcoming any sentiment of feminine solidarity that she might have felt with these women. She is not like them, she will never be like them. She has not rushed off to publish advertisements, she has not complained to the leaders of the community, and she has not circulated descriptions of Zvi-Meir Speismann, the man who tore her life to pieces. She will never do any of this.
 
Mende’s limbs are aching even though she is still in bed, as if she has strained herself in her sleep. The sour odour of sweat wafts in from the room of her elderly inlaws, God bless them. Even the reek of her husband’s parents is cause for thanking the Blessed Holy One. True, their house is only a dark, dilapidated old cabin of rotting wood, with two small rooms and a kitchen. But the walls are sealed against draughts, and it has a clay floor, wooden roof shingles, and thick-paned windows. And sometimes, a small living space can be an advantage, particularly if the kitchen stove has to heat the entire house. True, chicken is never served here, and the Friday-night fishcakes contain little by way of fish and plenty by way of onion. But borscht and rye bread are served every lunchtime, and cholent stew without meat on Shabbat is not so terrible.
 
The Speismanns could easily have turned their backs on Mende. After all, they couldn’t stand their son, Zvi-Meir, as it was. When he was young, they had hoped that he would make them proud, and they sent him to the illustrious Volozhin Yeshiva with the notion that he should become one of its top students. But after his first year, they heard that their son was openly declaring that the yeshiva’s rabbis were all hypocrites, and that the Vilna Gaon himself would have been ashamed of them. “They are a bunch of good-for-nothing wastrels,” Zvi-Meir said. “No more than dishonest schemers masquerading as hakhamim.” So Zvi-Meir left Volozhin, declaring that he would be better off as a poor pedlar than a Torah sage, if being a sage meant that he had to be officious, greedy, and aloof.
 
This change of career notwithstanding, Zvi-Meir still found plenty of reasons to blame and complain. He would bring his pedlar’s cart to the market but never encourage passers-by to buy his wares. He would stand there like the congregation’s rabbi, convinced that people would flock to his cart as they flocked to synagogue on Shabbat. But the “congregants” walked on by, thinking: If he does not behave like a vendor, why should I behave like a customer? So the Speismann household was one of the poorest in Motal. By the time Zvi-Meir abandoned his wife and children, they had already hit rock-bottom. They lit their house with oil instead of candles, and ate rye bread with unpeeled potatoes. When Mende tried to reason with her husband and give him business advice, he told her: “When the hen starts crowing like a rooster, it is time to take her to the slaughterhouse.” That is: never you mind. Heaven forfend, there’s nothing more to add.
 
####
 
Pressure on her chest is disrupting Mende’s breathing. Her children cling to her on her narrow bed. She keeps her body still, lest her fledglings awake, as her soul cries out, “Why are these children my concern?,” only to be immediately beset by guilt—“God Almighty! My poor babies! Heaven protect them!”—and she prays to the good God that He leave her body intact, so that she can provide for her children and offer them a place to rest their heads, and that He unburden her from the heretical thoughts that rise in her mind like the Yaselda in springtime, as it overflows and floods the plains of Polesia, turning them into black marshes.
 
Another indigent morning lies in wait for her and the children, begging at the gates of dawn. Yankele will go to the cheder and Mirl will help her with the housekeeping at the Goldschmidt residence on Market Street, where the rich of Motal live. Together, they will scrub the floor tiles of the jeweller’s opulent stone house, and once again, they will ogle Mrs. Goldschmidt’s pearl necklace worth three thousand roubles, the value of an entire lifetime of only just making ends meet. From there they will go on to more of the same at the Tabaksmann household, and then they will walk to the tavern: perhaps they will need a hand there too, and perhaps Yisrael Tate, the landlord, will treat Mende to another old issue of Hamagid that no one wants to read anymore.
 
Cloths and rags, scourers and buckets, floor tiles and ovens, tin bowls and sinks. And so their fingernails peel away the time, one house after another, the smell of detergent clinging to skin and soul. Their toil ends at sundown, leaving them just enough time to regain their strength for the next day. And so the waters of the Yaselda surge on.

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