The Landsmen

The Landsmen is a novel of Jewish-American roots. Set in the village of Golinsk in Czarist Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, it evokes life under a system of massively cruel anti-Semitism. The word “landsmen” in Yiddish means people from the same place, but in this novel it conveys the larger meaning of “brothers”—in suf­fering, in faith, in humanity.

Peter Martin wrote the novel from the memories of the old people he knew as a boy in Brooklyn. The result is a work of fiction that is rich in a sense of time and place. The effect is bardic. Each section of the novel is narrated by one of nine characters: Yeersel, the tailor; Maisha, the religion teacher; Laib, the musician; Shim, his brother; Nochim, the dairyman; Berel, the watercarrier; Laib-Shmul, the butcher; Tzippe-Sora, the distiller; and Mottel, the outcast. Some migrated to America; some died in Golinsk.

First published in 1952, *The Landsmen was the first volume of a projected trilogy, and was written to establish a sense of Jewish identity as the back­ground for a large fictional examination of Jewish-American life. Although The Landsmen was well received and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, it was never republished. The second volume of the trilogy, The Building,* appeared in 1960. Peter Martin died in 1961.