DUSTVILLAGE PHILADELPHIYE

From the author of Sadness is a White Bird, Long Listed for The Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize

Drawing on the inheritance of early 20th century Yiddish writers and poets, PHILADELPHIYE contains nods to Sholem Aleichem, Anna Margolin and Jacob Glatstein, using the playfulness of Yiddish and the difficulty of translating to tremendous effect: the novel is both gleeful and maniacal, propulsive and harrowing.

PHILADELPHIYE begins in the early 20th century, after a pogrom has killed every member of the village Plotsk, except two. One, Leyb, ends up in Philadelphia (or Philadelphiye, as he calls it) where he begins a relationship with Charles, a handsome Black man he meets on the underground gay scene. The other survivor, Gittl, somehow makes her way back to Leyb years later. After their reunion, the book splits into its second form: a tale told backwards that begins with Leyb snatching Charles's and Gittl's newborn back from a
racist doctor, goes back to Gittl being institutionalized, then goes back to her pregnancy, and ends finally at that same poignant reunion that ended the first half of the novel.

The novel's innovative structure infuses it with the same kind of excitement a reader feels when opening up Eimear McBride's
A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing or Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater.

Rothman Zecher also blends real history with imagined: his great aunt was institutionalized after giving birth to a mixed race baby, who was allegedly adopted by a staff member.