The Slaughterman's Daughter

The Slaughterman’s Daughter

First edition (Hebrew)
Author	Yaniv Iczkovits
Translator	Orr Scharf
Country	Israel
Language	Hebrew
Published	2015 () in Hebrew
Published in English	2020
Award	Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2021
ISBN	978 0 85705 830 0

The Slaughterman’s Daughter is the English-language title of Tikkun Ahar Hatzot (An After Midnight Prayer, Hebrew: תיקון אחר חצות'), an “epic historical adventure novel” written in a “fabulist style” about a Jewish community in a provincial Belarusian town which “takes the reader through the corridors of power, people and history of 19th century Belarus".^[1][2][3]

It was written by Israeli writer Yaniv Iczkovits in Hebrew and first published in Jerusalem in 2015. It was translated into English by Orr Scharf and first published as such in 2020.

Recognition[]

• Wingate Prize 2021;^[4]
• The Sunday Times’ “must read” pick;^[5]
• The Economist’s "best books of 2020";^[6]
• Kirkus Reviews "10 books to look for in 2021" pick.^[7]

Plot[]

It is 1894, and many Jews are emigrating from the Russian Empire to the United States, Germany, and Palestine; the story is set in motion by one husband and father who abandons his family - albeit only venturing as far as Minsk.^[2]

The townsfolk of Motal, a Belarusian town in the Pale of Settlement, are shocked when Fanny Keismann - devoted wife, mother of five, and celebrated cheese-maker - leaves her home at two hours past midnight and vanishes into the night. True, the husbands of Motal have been vanishing for years, but a wife and mother? Whoever heard of such a thing. What on earth possessed her?^[8]

Could it be related to the peculiar roadside murder on the way to Minsk? Even if not, the people of Motal might mutter about Fanny's reputation as a vilde chaya, a wild animal.^[8]

Motal[]

Motal is a small town in South-Western Belarus with a rich and tragic Jewish history. It is the birthplace of a number of famous Jews, including Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel.^[9]

The first records about the Jewish community go back to 17^th century. According to the 1806 census, there were 152 Jews in Motal and by 1897 its Jewish population had climbed to 1,354 Jews, comprising 32% of the total population. The majority of Jews lived on small-scale trade and craft. Small industry started to develop in Motal at the end of the 19th century with the establishment of two candle workshops, three smithies, a mill, and butter factory. There were two synagogues in the town and a heder.

During World War II the area was occupied by Nazi forces that perpetrated mass executions of local Jews.^[10][11]

Interesting facts about the book[]

When Iczkovits wrote The Slaughterman’s Daughter he didn’t want to visit Belarus – “ I wanted to sketch these lost worlds from my imagination and support the story with thorough historical research. I thought that if I travelled there, I would find a totally different world with no Jews, no Shtetls, just a standard Eastern European country with one Jewish museum and a desolate synagogue.” However, one month before the book was supposed to be printed in Israel, he decided he needed to do some fact-checking and travelled to Belarus.^[12]

He didn’t have high expectations for the journey knowing that the world today is entirely different from what it was in the 19^th century. However, when he saw a boat on the Yaselda river “it perfectly matched [his] vision of Zizek’s boat” and Iczkovits realised that “maybe the old world and our world are not so very different” and that he was “not just following the protagonists of his book [but] might actually meet them”.^[12]

References[]