Lublin - Manya Wilkinson

Winner of the Wingate Literary PrizeLonglisted for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize, United States and CanadaElya is the lad with the vision, and Elya has the map. Ziv and Kiva aren’t so sure. The water runs out long before they find the Village of Lakes. The food runs out well before the flaky crescent pastries of Prune Town. They never reach the Village of Girls (how disappointing); they do stumble into Russian Town, rumoured to be a dangerous place for Jews (it is). As three young boys set off from Mezritsh with a case of bristle brushes to sell in the great market town of Lublin, wearing shoes of uneven quality and possessed of decidedly unequal enthusiasms, they quickly find that nothing, not Elya’s jokes nor Kiva’s prayers nor Ziv’s sublime irritatingness, can keep the maw of history from closing bloodily around them. Absurd, riveting, alarming, hilarious, the dialogue devastatingly sharp and the pacing extraordinary, Lublin is the sort of journey into nothingness that changes everything it touches.