Shtetl Love Song

Shtetl Love Song is a requiem for the pre-war Jewish shtetl, for a people and a way of life that was destroyed.

Set in the rural Lithuanian landscape on the eve of World War II, `Shtetl Love Song' is full of tender affection, soft irony, and sharp observations.

Guided by the memory of his beloved mother, the masterful narrator takes us into the very midst of his enchanted family world, recreating the past that is irrevocably destroyed and yet fully alive in his memory.

Kanovich, himself a child of a Lithuanian shtetl who survived the Holocaust almost by a miracle, made it his mission to serve, against all odds, as a custodian of the collective memory of generations of Litvaks, Lithuanian Jews.' - Mikhail Krutikov, Professor of Slavic and Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The novel won the Liudas Dovydenas Prize awarded by the Lithuanian Writers' Union. Winner the Liudo Dovydeno Prize awarded by the Lithuanian Writers' Union