The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six [Paperback]

Jonathon Keats (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 10, 2009

Marvelous and mystical stories of the thirty-six anonymous saints whose decency sustains the world–reimagined from Jewish folklore.

A liar, a cheat, a degenerate, and a whore. These are the last people one might expect to be virtuous. But a legendary Kabbalist has discovered the truth: they are just some of the thirty-six hidden ones, the righteous individuals who ultimately make the world a better place. In these captivating stories, we meet twelve of the secret benefactors, including a timekeeper’s son who shows a sleepless village the beauty of dreams; a gambler who teaches a king ruled by the tyranny of the past to roll the dice; a thief who realizes that his job is to keep his fellow townsfolk honest; and a golem–a woman made of mud–who teaches kings and peasants the real nature of humanity.

With boundless imagination and a delightful sense of humor, acclaimed writer and artist Jonathon Keats has turned the traditional folktale on its head, creating heroes from the unlikeliest of characters, and enchanting readers with these stunningly original fables.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Keats (The Pathology of Lies) re-imagines Jewish folklore in his collection of stories about the Talmudic idea of the Lamedh-Vov, 36 righteous souls who must exist at all times in order for humanity, and the world, to sustain itself. A fictional author's foreword by Jay Katz, Ph.D., summarizes the idea of the Lamedh-Vov and establishes its legitimacy by citing a list of names Katz found while excavating a German synagogue. The stories that follow—covering 12 of the 36 souls—are based on Katz's discussions with villagers. The heroes of these stories include a liar, a thief, an idiot and a whore—not your typical folk heroes. Gimmel the Gambler, for example, loses his fortune to a beautiful peasant woman with one roll of the dice; with her new riches, she's able to marry the king. The accomplishment of this book is more about stylistic mimicry than originality; Keats's ear for the language of folktales comes through nicely, though because of the stories' limited scope, they lack bite. (Feb.)
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—This slender book opens with a foreword by its fictional author, Jay Katz, PhD, in which he describes how, many years earlier, he had unearthed a list of names buried deep beneath the ruins of a German city. Determined to understand just what the list might mean, he took to the road to interview local villagers, who told him that they are the names of the "Lamedh-Vov," the 36 anonymous people who must exist on Earth to make it a better place. Among them are a whore, a fool, a thief, and a gambler. Written in a folkloric style, with short lyrical sentences that incorporate some modern wording, the tales appear to be easy reads, but have a depth that creates questions that beg for discussion. They are rich with Jewish tradition, and teens who lack that knowledge may need guidance in order to fully understand them.—Connie Williams, Kenilworth Jr. High, Petaluma, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Original edition (February 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812978978
• ISBN-13: 978-0812978971
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #941,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book, January 23, 2009

By 

Matthew Smith "Roger Mexico" (TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six (Paperback)

(What's this?)

I would suggest making sure that when you start reading this book that you make sure you have plenty of time for it, because it is extremely hard to put this book down. This is the best work of fiction that I have read in a long time. I started the book yesterday and read straight through. It is really that good and that entertaining.

For such short stories the author has an amazing ability to pull the reader into the characters, and really makes the reader invest something in the story right from the beginning. This is what makes the stories so compelling, but it is the author's imagination and story telling that keeps you hooked and reading on.

Each story has the feel of a parable which was the author's intent, but the stories are not preachy. What I most enjoyed was how the author was able to employ such clever twists in the stories. At the beginning of each new story I would find myself wondering how the author is going to turn this character into a lesson. Just how was each story going to work to its unique conclusion was something I wondered with each new story.

This is just a wonderfully written book. I enjoyed every page of it, and I feel very comfortable highly recommending this excellent little book to everyone.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars luminous, January 21, 2009

By 

Seven Kitties "7kitties" (Blue Point, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six (Paperback)

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These stories are like a rich chocolate dessert--you can't read the book fast. Every story deserves a full stop, a break, to enjoy. The stories themselves are lovely, floating in a fairy tale world of odd logics (a town that refuses to sleep, a city that Death didn't visit, etc) that serve as backdrops for the themes of each story.

Like fairy-tales, also, morality doesn't often figure into the equation, and characters are types used to illustrate the larger theme; but thankfully, in these stories there *is* a larger theme to each story (what it *is* is your job to puzzle out while you digest each story). This means that if you want mystery, action, thrills, etcetera, this book may not be to your taste.

I do wonder about the necessity of the fictional scholarly apparatus that bookend the stories: I'm most familiar with that mysterious-disappearance-but-left-text device from Lovecraftian horror tales, so it reads to this reader, at least, as a bit cheezy. Not sure what his purpose is--perhaps to create some sort of DaVinci code mystique? It does seek to elevate the tales from just a story-collection, but I'm honestly not sure that they need that kind of help.

Beautiful, haunting, lyrical. A must-read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 12 Excellent Stories Drawn from Jewish Folklore, January 21, 2009

By 

TammyJo Eckhart "TammyJo Eckhart" (Bloomington, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-six (Paperback)

(What's this?)

Don't let the title mislead you, there are only 12 short stories here but these twelve are so well written, so engaging, and so enlightening that I devoured it in less than 24 hours. From the first page we are dropped into a fictional world where a Jewish scholar shares his latest find with us in the form of "real accounts" of the lives of the Lamedh-Vov who justify the existence of humanity in the mind of God. We meet 6 men and 6 women whose lives are both tragedy and victory as they merely live best they can, battered and bolstered by the world around them. Set in an unspecified but likely early modern Europe, we see them and feel for them as embody what might be called cultural icons. Love them or hate them, their tales touched me and made me keep reading and reading.