Leib Weihnachtskuchen And His Child

by Karl Emil Franzos, Michael Mitchell

Janko Vygoda's parents spend their time drinking themselves to an early grave at the village inn; their farm is mortgaged to the hilt to the three local moneylenders, a Pole, an Armenian and a Jew. Janko swears he will keep his inheritance intact, will not sell one square inch of his land.
The man he holds responsible for his misfortune is the Jewish innkeeper, Leib Weihnachtskuchen, who also arranges loans for the local peasants. By chance, he discovers the Jew is not the bloodsucking monster he imagined and the impoverished innkeeper becomes his only friend in the village. Gradually the Christian Janko falls in love with the Jew's daughter, Miriam. He swears another "one bed or one grave."
The only chance Leib and his wife have of providing for their daughter is to marry her to an old Jew, the owner of the local sawmill. The wheels of tragedy are set in motion.
Leib Weihnachtskuchen and his Child is a story of obsessive passion set in Podolia, now part of the Ukraine but in the nineteenth century a backward, multi-racial corner of Europe where the Russian and Habsburg empires met.

214 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2005

About the author

Karl Emil Franzos was a popular Austrian novelist of the late 19th century. His works, both reportage and fiction, concentrate on the multi-ethnic corner of Galicia, Podolia and Bukovina, now largely in Ukraine, where the Habsburg and Russian empires met. This area became so closely associated with his name that one critic called it "Franzos country". A number of his books were translated into English, and Gladstone is said to have been among his admirers.

Reviews

[Otto · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like Hiob by Joseph Roth, you will also enjoy Leib Weihnachtskuchen, the Jewish innkeeper in Winkowce, Galicia, who lives here with great trust in God and naive honesty. The daughter Miriam is his everything, poverty compels some concessions, but Leib always listens to what HE is asking of him. And unfortunately, this is how the misfortune takes its course. Karl Emil Franzos wrote a melancholic book here, a book that hopes that religions can live together, but where the protagonists ultimately fail because of passions and indissoluble separations. #recommended

[Jane Tatam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book, and very moving.It's on my list of best ever read, a kind of Slavonic Tess of the D'Urbervilles