A mesmerizing, inventive story of three souls in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old.
'Beautiful and original . . . making itself felt in complex and powerful and visionary ways, led by rhythm in the language and the urge to make that language new' Colm Tóibín
'Evocative, inventive, vivid and strange Before All the World is a mesmeric, enrapturing read'Before All the World is beautiful and original. It is also strange, arresting, high-risk. Very quickly this novel starts to work on the mind, making itself felt in complex and powerful and visionary ways, led by rhythm in the language and the urge to make that language newBefore All the World startles and swirls, and makes fresh the experience of language itself. It has it all:
a gripping story, an original structure and
a tender, ghostly glowOriginal, daring, experimental, moving, poignant, engaging . . . With shades of Tony Kushner and Cynthia Ozick . . . Before All the World understands how our worlds are made by words, and in the altering of the latter we may as yet redeem the former
A one-of-a-kind creationRich and engrossing . . . A powerful story, brilliantly told
Most closely resembles something by Joyce or Beckett . . . A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world's darkness. A highly original and powerful tale told in defiance of the world's darkness
Moriel Rothman-Zecher is a Jerusalem-born novelist and poet. His first novel, Sadness Is a White Bird, was a finalist for a Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a National Jewish Book Award, won an Ohioana Book Award, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His poetry and essays have been published in The American Poetry Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, The Common, The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, and ZYZZYVA, and he is the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honor, two MacDowell Fellowships, and Yiddishkayt's Wallis Annenberg Helix Fellowship.