Grigory Kanovich
Shtetl Love Song (Mestěčkovyj romans)
LITHUANIA
BOOK
The book was inspired by the story of the author’s authentic grandparents, parents, relatives, and other family friends; in the second part, he recalls his childhood in a sleepy Jewish town deeply immersed in traditional religious rituals. Its inhabitants lived for many years in a closed community alongside their Lithuanian and Polish neighbours; they probably differed from them most in language, writing, and religion, but also in their particular humour and daydreams of love and togetherness. They were torn out of these by the new times when Lithuania found itself locked between two great powers – first occupied by the Russians and shortly afterwards by the Germans – and the premonition of something evil came true after the German army invaded the country.
Published by Pavel Mervart, 2023
AUTHOR
© archiv rodiny
Grigory Kanovich (1929-2023) was a Russian writing novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. He spent his childhood in the Lithuanian town of Jonava. At the beginning of the war, he, his father, and his mother fled to Kazakhstan and then moved to the Ural Mountains. Only in 1945 did they return to Vilnius. The author’s books, which form a loose series on the life of the Lithuanian Jewish community, have been nominated for the Booker Prize several times. The Czech editions of I am Looking at the Stars (Ja smotrju na zvjozdy) (1963), The Tears and Prayers of Fools (Sljozy i molitvy durakov) (1987), Slaves Will Not Enter Paradise (I nět rabam raja) (1992), and A Kid for Two Pennies (Kozljonok za dva groša) (2001) were published. Kanovich lived and worked in Israel from 1993, where he also died. In the last period of his life, he actively opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
TRANSLATION
Jana Mertinová, Vladimir Piskoř
