Grigori Kanovich

Kozlenok za dva grosha

A Kid for Two Pennies Novel. Vilnius 1989. 330 pages

Foreign rights:

Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Russia University Press

Kanovich‘s novel „A Kid for Two Pennies“ has lost none of its relevance even after 30 years. It was written in 1989 and describes the coexistence of Jews with Lithuanians and the Russian state. Or rather the coexistence or even better the friction and resentment on all sides.

Kanovich describes the life of the Jews in the multi-ethnic border area with the German Empire at Nemunas (Memel), with everyday poverty, the problems with the Russian state power and the deep Jewish longing for the „homeland of the grand- fathers“.

At the center of the plot is the family around the stonemason Ephraim. While the daughter Zerta lives in Kiev, Ephraim‘s sons are all nearby and cause him problems because they are so completely different. Ephraim‘s youngest son Ezra hangs out at fairs and leads an unstable life with his non-Jewish girlfriend. Mixed partnerships between Jews and Christians are not welcomed by both sides. Son Shakhna lives in Vilna according to the Torah and is said to have a high position with the governor „as a studied Jew“. Son Hirsch is in prison for shooting at the governor. Hirsch thinks a machine gun is today‘s Torah; he fights the tsar with armed force „destroying his own house.“

As Kanovich says at the end: „The world cannot simply be divided into good and evil, into truth and untruth: everything in the world is intertwined... in every Jew there is also a Russian, in every Russian a Jew, in every Lithuanian a Polish, in every Polish a German.“