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    The Lost Shtetl: A Novel
    The Lost Shtetl: A Novel
    The Lost Shtetl: A Novel
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Lost Shtetl: A Novel

    Written by Max Gross

    Narrated by Steven Jay Cohen

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A remarkable debut novel—written with the fearless imagination of Michael Chabon and the piercing humor of Gary Shteyngart—about a small Jewish village in the Polish forest that is so secluded no one knows it exists . . . until now.

    What if there was a town that history missed?

    For decades, the tiny Jewish shtetl of Kreskol existed in happy isolation, virtually untouched and unchanged. Spared by the Holocaust and the Cold War, its residents enjoyed remarkable peace. It missed out on cars, and electricity, and the internet, and indoor plumbing. But when a marriage dispute spins out of control, the whole town comes crashing into the twenty-first century.

    Pesha Lindauer, who has just suffered an ugly, acrimonious divorce, suddenly disappears. A day later, her husband goes after her, setting off a panic among the town elders. They send a woefully unprepared outcast named Yankel Lewinkopf out into the wider world to alert the Polish authorities.

     Venturing beyond the remote safety of Kreskol, Yankel is confronted by the beauty and the ravages of the modern-day outside world – and his reception is met with a confusing mix of disbelief, condescension, and unexpected kindness. When the truth eventually surfaces, his story and the existence of Kreskol make headlines nationwide. 

    Returning Yankel to Kreskol, the Polish government plans to reintegrate the town that time forgot. Yet in doing so, the devious origins of its disappearance come to the light. And what has become of the mystery of Pesha and her former husband? Divided between those embracing change and those clinging to its old world ways, the people of Kreskol will have to find a way to come together . . .  or risk their village disappearing for good.

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 13, 2020
    ISBN9780063035331
    Author

    Max Gross

    Max Gross is a former staff writer for the New York Post and the Forward and is currently the Editor in Chief of the Commercial Observer. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

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    Reviews for The Lost Shtetl

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      Reason Read: Jewish Book Club Dec 2022 read, ROOTI was happy to read this book this month because it had been on my shelf for awhile. It is a story of a shtetl that was lost in Poland and totally did know that there was a WWII. Their contact with the world disrupts their community but it also results in the world accusing them of faking this and eventually this lost shtetl wishes they had never been found. It's an easy read with exploration of the Yiddish Jews and how culture and contact with the world can come with serious concerns.
    • 4/5
      Very good story! A few slow moving parts that were a little difficult for me to get through but, overall, very well done. I could listen again…..☺️
    • 4/5
      interesting premise. Written like a Batsheva Singer, with Jewish phrases and lingo and style. It was a bit long.I found the ending very uncomfortable
    • 5/5
      Do you have to be Jewish to love this book? No. You just have to be the type of reader who enjoys a bit of historical magical realism. In this tale, the tiny, insular Polish shtetl (Yiddish for "village") of Kreskol has been hidden in the deep woods, beyond modern viewing and imagination, surviving world wars and undiscovered even by Nazi troops when Poland was overrun. When a contentious married couple divorces (very rare) and then disappears, a baker's apprentice is recruited to venture into the outer world and find them. Yankel hitches a ride with gypsies, the only outsiders who travel through Kreskol, and is brought to Smolskie, the nearest small city. Here Yankel makes the startling discoveries of cars, trains, cellphones, televisions, internet, and planes, and lands in a psychiatric hospital where he finds sympathetic staff members who help him to make a gradual adjustment to the perils and pleasure of what for him is a true new world. We also follow the couple Yankel is seeking, Pesha and Ishmael, as they go their own separate and doomed ways. And back in Kreskol, everything changes when the whole of Poland and the entire world marvels at their secret existence. This is a delightful adventure story, filled with humor and pathos.Quote: "He saw in the story of the Holocaust a vision of the future that Kreskol narrowly avoided. He saw all the great advances of technology that had been honed and perfected in the service of mankind's most primitive and horrific instincts."