The Escape Artist: A Novel by Judith Katz

From the Publisher

Set in the brothels and gangster dens of Jewish Buenos Aires at the beginning of the twentieth century, The Escape Artist catapults us into the lives of Sofia Teitelbaum (tricked into prostitution and away from the modest gentility of her Eastern European family), and a handsome, mysterious magician, Hankus - formerly Hannah - Lubarsky (enjoying the freedom of South America after the pogroms of Poland), as they somersault, tumble, and spin their way into an imagined lesbian future together. Written with the bent notes and dizzying rhythms of a klezmer tune, The Escape Artist is a breathtaking, delightful tale, full of spills, chills, and lush language.

Publishers Weekly

Katz (Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound) lives up to her first novel's potential in this moving, funny, wholly original picaresque about a nice Jewish girl who, in 1913, leaves Poland for the New World under what areto say the leastunusual circumstances. When Tutsik Goldenberg comes to Warsaw, claiming to be a lonely Argentine diamond merchant in search of a wife, Sofia Teitelbaum's parents quickly make the match. As soon as the couple heads west, however, Sofia learns that Tutsik has bigger, more devious things in mind than marriage. He smuggles her into Buenos Aires to work as a prostitute for his sister, Madam Perle (an observant Jew who won't let her women work on Fridays but insists on instructing them herself in the art of love). Sofia narrates her adventures to "Hankus," another Polish-Jewish woman who, masquerading as a man, has made her life as a magician. The pasts and common destiny of these two remarkable womenrelated with perfect timing in Sofia's convincing Yiddish-tinged Englishcome together beautifully in this nicely crafted, emotionally satisfying and well-researched historical fiction. (May)

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