The Landsmen

By Peter Martin

Book Overview

The Landsmen is a novel of Jewish-American roots. Set in the village of Golinsk in Czarist Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, it evokes life under a system of massively cruel anti-Semitism.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000ONVAE8
• Release Date: January 1952
• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Length: 367 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The real thing - no schmaltz or idealizations

This book was origianlly published in 1952 by Little Brown and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won a National Book Award. This book was intended to be the root novel of a trilogy. "The Landsmen" by Peter Martin is one of the most universal novels I have ever read. A small village in pre-revolutionary Russia springs to life - what a cast of characters - all of them clearly recognizable in our time! Martin has such compassion, wit, irony, and he writes in a classical manner - no gimmicks, and no schtick, just rock solid counterpoint and harmony. He takes the notes of the major and minor literary scale(s) and does amazing things! Check out the second novel in the trilogy, "The Building" (1960) which is set in America in the 1930's. Sadly, Martin died suddenly in 1961 before he could finish the third novel.