Book cover of Dineh: An Autobiographical Novel

Book description

Available in English translation for the first time, Dineh, posthumously published, is an autobiographical Yiddish-language novel by Ida Maze (1893-1962). Dineh is a pastorale laced with beauty and sorrow and a bildungsroman told from the point of view of a young girl. Living in what is now Belarus, Maze's eponymous…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Dineh as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dineh took me inside the experience of a young girl growing up in the “Fiddler on the Roof” world at the turn of the 20th Century.

Like James Joyce’s Dubliners, it begins in the mindset of a very young child whose world gradually opens up and opens out as she grows up. The book is chock-full of everyday life -- details about household tasks, farm animals, and country landscapes -- and also teeming with family drama and the pressures of the larger world.

My favorite scene is reflected on the book’s cover. A tree growing beside the girl’s bedroom…

If you love Dineh...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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