Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

YIDDISH FOR PIRATES

Gary Barwin

A stunning debut, to be launched on Random House's prestigious New Face of Fiction program .

This outstanding novel combines the adventure of Treasure Island with the comedy of The Sisters Brothers, and the alternate history of The Yiddish Policemen's Union with the expanse of Don Quixote.

Set in the years around 1492, YIDDISH FOR PIRATES recounts the compelling story of Moishe, a Bar Mitzvah boy who leaves home to join a ship's crew. Onboard he meets Aaron, the polyglot parrot who becomes his near-constant companion and the narrator of this tale.

This brilliant novel is filled with Jewish takes on classic pirate talesfights, prison escapes, and exploits on the high seas but it's also a tender love story, between Moishe and Sarah, and between Aaron and his "shoulder," Moishe. Rich with puns, colourful language, post-colonial satire and Kabbalistic hijinks, YIDDISH FOR PIRATES is also a compelling examination of mortality, memory, identity and persecution, from one of this country's most talented writers.

GARY BARWIN is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, educator, and the author of 17 books of poetry, and work for teens and children. His work has been widely performed, broadcast, anthologized and published nationally and internationally, and has been regularly commissioned by the CBC. His latest book is Moon Baboon Canoe (poetry, Mansfield Press, 2014.) He received a PhD in music composition, a B.A., B.F.A and a B.Ed and taught middle school and high school for nearly ten years. He has taught writing at McMaster University and at Mohawk College, to street-involved youth, and at Offcentre Art and Creativity Workshops. He was the Fall 2013 Young Voices eWriter-in-Residence at the Toronto Public Library and will be Writer-in-Residence at Western University in 2014-2015.

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Book Published 2023-05-11 by Random House Canada

Comments

Boreal

[A] picaresque historical novel that's both postmodern and magic realist when it's not an old-fashioned farce. Like Blazing Saddles, it deals through absurdity with the absurdities of bigotry. . . . [A] delightful pastiche . . . mock-scholarly vaudeville of a novel. Robert Fulford

"[Yiddish for Pirates is] simply not like anything else. . . . [Yiddish for Pirates is] absolutely marvellous and will woo you, should you let it. . . . Author Gary Barwin . . . has created out of the Spanish Inquisition a novel that feels both appropriately complex and yet vigorously adventuresome. . . . The real star of this book is the language-or, more properly, the languages. With . . . some of the freshest and most whimsical English ever contained between covers, Yiddish for Pirates is a language-lover's dream come true. The mordant observations offered by the talking parrot, the descriptions of historical scenes rendered intimate through the characters, and even the atmospheric settings are affecting precisely because they never seem careful or lapidary in their construction. Instead, the breezy and improvisational feel of the words as organized make the book sing like a jazz solo in the hands of a great artist. More than once I laughed aloud and required whomever was nearby to sit for a dramatic reading of an especially well-made turn of phrase, an affecting sentence or a paragraph that bubbled with artistry. Few books manage to treat the subjects of identity, conflict, home and honour so fully and so movingly. Without veering into the didactic, Yiddish for Pirates illuminates an interior life shaped by alarming and extraordinary circumstances but still, essentially, guided by love and a rigorous moral code. In this way in particular, the book feels very Jewish to me. It is true to the many narratives of diaspora my people have created (and participated in) over the years. . . . [In Yiddish for Pirates] Barwin strikes a moving, masterful note. Yiddish for Pirates has an unmatched spryness in both thought and language. It doesn't conform well to any category or trope of literature, but instead makes a place as a fresh, new thing that draws from sea shanties and Talmud, history and fantasy, romance, adventure, linguistics, fashion, and the adventure serial of the early days of movies. This book is as irrepressible as my enthusiasm for it. You'll never read anything else like it, and that's a shonde."

Fun, funny and entertaining. [Yiddish for Pirates is] experimental, interesting and intelligent. . . . On the surface, it's a pirate story. A rollicking adventure. If you want to dig into language, you can. If you're looking for a love story, it's there. But on a deeper level, it's largely about persecution, which means readers might be surprised to find it's also hilarious. But it is.

2016 Shortlist Read more...

"Rarely does one encounter a work of Canadian literature this exuberant, impassioned, and enthralled with the very nature and essence of storytelling. Yiddish for Pirates is many things: a postmodern pastiche, an episodic picaresque, a compendium of tales competing to see which can stand tallest, and a virtual catalogue of Jewish humour through the ages."

"Between the freaky, funny filmmaker Guy Madden and author Gary Barwin, Canada is producing some of the most innovative creative works of our time."

If a novel about a Jewish pirate and a sentient Yiddish-speaking five-hundred-year-old parrot seems a bit meshugge, well, give it a chance, because it turns out it's crazy good. Gary Barwin's first novel is a real hoot (bird pun intended). . . . Barwin . . . has crafted a wonderfully funny book.