King of the Jews

King of the Jews

“A masterpiece that forged a boisterously new, morally intense vision of the Holocaust.”

—New York Times

“The first novel about the Holocaust that manages to be adequate to its own ambition.”

—Larry McMurtry, New York Magazine

“Monumental, vivid, and engrossing.”

—New York Review of Books

“The best book yet to be written on the Holocaust. A superb novel.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Epstein has done the impossible…. He has shown what the power of art—his art—can reveal of the depths of the unspeakable.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Profoundly daring…. Epstein can summon up life from the bottom of despair.”

—Boston Sunday Globe

“An astonishing accomplishment.”

—Washington Post Book World

“The only novel of its kind to survive the horror it confronts and emerge undamaged as a truly superior work of art.”

—Terrence Des Pres

“Epstein’s great power as an artist is the discovery of a voice—humane, civil, curious, befuddled, intelligent…. He has by the power of the mind’s eye borne true witness.”

—Geoffrey Wolff, Esquire

“Stark, powerful…. A story that pulsates with an almost manic intensity, a story that mirrors a world gone mad.”

—Publishers Weekly

“This novel compels our witness.”

—Village Voice

“A work of elegance, intelligence, wit, and originality…. Epstein presents an in-depth picture of human suffering and deals with the most horrible topic of our century in a moving and credible fashion.”

—Dallas Morning News

“A brave and powerful novel.”

—St. Louis Globe-Democrat

“The extraordinary storytelling facility of the author matches the vivid imagery in his telling. Thus, invested in this shattering novel, is the pure, delicious rhythm of a true artist.”

—West Coast Review of Books

For Joe Kanon

Contents

1. The Golden Age

2. The Elder

3. Smuggling

4. The Wedding

5. The Five Day Strike

6. A Decision for the Judenrat

7. The Yellow Bus

8. Makbet

9. The Pulley

10. Fighters

11. Urania

Chapter One

The Golden Age

I

In the winter of 1918-1919, on a day when the wind was blowing, I. C. Trumpelman arrived in our town. He was wearing a brown overcoat and a brown hat and had a large suitcase in either hand. The overcoat was a cheap one, woven from horsehair. “Mister,” he said in Polish to the first person he saw on the platform, “find me a hotel.” For such a large man his voice was high, with a trace of the lisp that Jews have in Vilna. Even at that time his hair was gray, almost white, and hung far over his collar. His eyes peered through the same pair of “American” spectacles—round lenses in black metal frames—that he was to wear twenty and twenty-five years later. The eyes themselves were also round, like a boy’s, and were for a Litvak’s remarkably blue.

Our main station, like many others built in the 1880’s, was designed by the Italian, Donati. It is to this day still standing, with turrets of red brick, with stone buttresses, with slanted windows through which you can see clouds and birds and the lemon-colored lozenge of the Polish sun. The man on the platform, the one Trumpelman spoke to, led him through the station arches and out into the winter light. Although he was not a railway porter, and not even a member of the working class, this Pole carried both of the Jew’s valises.