Lublin

Synopsis

In 1907, three Jewish boys set out from the village of Mezritsh for the bustling market town of Lublin, convinced that fortune lies just beyond the horizon. Armed with a case of bristle brushes, uneven shoes, and wildly different temperaments, Elya, Ziv, and Kiva embark on what begins as an adventure but slowly becomes something far more profound. Along the way they encounter hunger, humour, danger, friendship, and the growing shadow of history, as the world around them edges toward catastrophe.

Blending the charm of a folktale with the weight of historical fiction, Lublin is at once funny, heartbreaking, and deeply original. Manya Wilkinson moves effortlessly between absurd comedy and devastating prophecy, creating a novel that celebrates friendship while confronting the fragility of Jewish life in early twentieth-century Eastern Europe. Winner of the 2025 Wingate Literary Prize, the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, and the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award, Lublin is an unforgettable story of innocence, resilience, and the inexorable pull of history.

About the Author

Manya Wilkinson is a Jewish New Yorker who has lived in the north of England for more than two decades. A former senior lecturer in prose and scriptwriting at Newcastle University, she now teaches creative writing through Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts and Mslexia. Her fiction has appeared in anthologies, her radio dramas have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and Lublin has established her as one of Britain's most distinctive contemporary novelists.

Publisher

And Other Stories

Publication Date

April 2, 2024

Format

Paperback

Pages

160

Subjects

Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Jewish Literature · Coming-of-Age · European Fiction

ISBN

9781913505943