Sign-In
Cart
The Lampmaker
Paperback
Publisher Price: $16.81
ISBN13: 9781068429507
Publisher: Limetree Books
Published: Mar 18 2025
Pages: 314
Weight: 0.68
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.06 Depth: 7.81
Language: English
Inspired by his grandfather's life story, author Ian Assersohn has brought the world of late nineteenth century Russian and English Jewry to life in a debut novel full of life, love, tragedy and humour.
The story of The Lampmaker begins in the northwest corner of Czarist Russia, present-day Latvia, in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It concerns the adventures of two young Jewish boys, Rafael Yacobsohn and his younger brother Yossel.
Their parents, Itzhak and Scheine, struggle to make a living and keep their boys safe against a background of anti-Jewish repression and violence. Their biggest fear is that one of the boys will be conscripted into the Russian army when they reach the age of twelve. If taken, they will serve a twenty-five year term - if they survive that long.
Desperate to avoid finding their sons' names on the conscription list, Itzhak and Scheine devise a plan to save them. But will it work?
Rafael and Yossel's search for safety and freedom takes them first to Riga, and ultimately to the overcrowded squalor of Victorian London's East End. To have any chance of survival they must rely on hard work, luck, and a healthy dose of chutzpah.
Also from
Assersohn, Ian
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Musil, Robert
Agee, Joel
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paperback