{"product_id":"before-all-the-world-9781250872166","title":"Before All the World","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn NPR Best Book of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA mesmerizing, inventive story of three souls in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eI do not believe that all the world is darkness.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, Leyb meets Charles. They are at a former speakeasy called Cricket's, a bar that welcomes, as Charles says in his secondhand Yiddish, feygeles. Leyb is startled; fourteen years in amerike has taught him that his native tongue is not known beyond his people. And yet here is suave Charles--fingers stained with ink, an easy manner with the barkeep--a Black man from the Seventh Ward, a fellow traveler of Red Emma's, speaking Jewish to a young man he will come to call Lion. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLion is haunted by memories of life before, in Zatelsk, where everyone in his village, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl, and Leyb himself, was taken to the forest and killed. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThen, miraculously, Gittl is in Philadelphia, too, thanks to a poem she wrote and the intervention of a shadowy character known only as the Baroness of Philadelphia. And surrounding Gittl are malokhim, the spirits of her siblings. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFlowing and churning and seething with a glorious surge of language, carried along by questions of survival and hope and the possibility of a better world, Moriel Rothman-Zecher's\u003ci\u003e Before All the World \u003c\/i\u003elays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way ahead, and the power that comes from our responsibility to the future. It asks, in the voices of its angels, the most essential question: What do you intend to do before all the world?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Picador USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/10\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781250872166\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 344\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.50h x 5.00w x 1.00d","brand":"Moriel Rothman-Zecher","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43084141297845,"sku":"9781250872166","price":16.15,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_288bf20c-5bea-4f53-8381-af1484832984.jpg?v=1692111357","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/before-all-the-world-9781250872166","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}