SONGS FOR THE BUTCHER'S DAUGHTER

An endlessly inventive, moving, funny and utterly beguiling story of faith lost -- and hope found -- in translation, and of a love that lasts a lifetime.
Fans of Nicole Krauss' 'The History of Love', Michael Chabon's 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' and Jonathan Safran Foer's 'Everything is Illuminated' will love this novel.

In the last years of the twentieth century, two very different lives unexpectedly converge: those of a ninety-something Russian immigrant nearing the end of his days, and of his future translator, a twenty-one-year-old Boston Catholic college student for whom life -- and love -- is just beginning. This is their story.

One sweltering summer, a young graduate already running out of career options takes a job in a Yiddish book warehouse and finds himself falling in love with both a woman and a language. It is here that he first crosses paths with Itsik Malpesh, the (self-proclaimed) last great Yiddish poet. When he discovers a set of old ledgers in which Malpesh has written his memoirs -- twenty-two volumes brimming with adventure, deception, passion and wit -- the young man is compelled to translate them. In so doing, he embarks upon a great lie that will define his future, and the most unlikely yet enduring friendship he'll ever have.