This first-ever English translation of Esther Kreitman's novel Diamonds was originally published in 1944 by W&G Foyle in London in Yiddish. Set in Antwerp and London in the years around the time of the First World War. Diamonds tells the story of the collapsing world of a rich diamond merchant, Gedaliah Berman and his family: it covers their life in Antwerp in the years leading up to the outbreak of war, their flight to London with other Jewish refugees, their life in London for the duration of the war, and the return to Antwerp of Gedaliah and his two sons after the war.

Diamonds has an authentic feel. It captures the mood of impending war in the two cities, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of the diamond trade, and describes with passionate intensity the pressures on an uprooted traditional Jewish family in the modern industrialised world. Kreitman has created in Gedaliah Berman and his son David a powerful study of a troubled family relationship at a time of momentous social upheaval.

The novel draws on her own unhappy experience of living in Antwerp with her husband, a diamond worker, in an arranged marriage, and their flight to London at the outbreak of the Great War.. Sympathetically, and often satirically observed are the various Jewish characters in the diamond trade, Leybesh the young socialist, the bustle of the carnival in Antwerp, and various elements of the London scene: the snobbery and wrangling for rank even among the refugees in the temporary hotels in which they are housed, the tumult of speakers at Hyde Park Corner, the Jewish restaurant in Whitechapel, the bustling Jewish life of the East End, and the smart suburbs of North London.

Translated by Heather Valencia.

£12.99
Paperback: 360 pp,
UK Publication Date: 2007/2008