Tag: Winnipeg

‘Devil in Babylon’ astute study of jazz age

Allan Levine, the hybrid Winnipeg novelist, historian and school teacher, says he is putting his Jewish detective hero Sam Klein on the shelf for a while, even though his trio of Sam Klein mystery novels “has done well in Canada and in Germany, where I did a five-city book tour last fall.” The Sam Klein…

From Kamenets-Podolsk to Winnipeg: The History of the Lechtziers

Reuven Lexier, a Toronto orthopaedic surgeon, recently published this handsome 150-page volume that documents his family’s experience in Canada from the moment his great-great-grandparents, Shimon and Chana Lechtzier, settled in Winnipeg with their four sons and two daughters in 1882. Lexier spent about 10 years gathering the 196 photographs, archival documents, newspaper clippings and memorabilia…

Allan Levine’s Jewish detective

Winnipeg writer Allan Levine has introduced a Jewish literary detective in his first novel, The Blood Libel (Great Plains Fiction). The novel is set in Winnipeg’s North End in 1911, when the streets were teeming with impoverished immigrants. Levine’s protagonist, 28-year-old Sam Klein, works in a brothel and turns gumshoe after a rabbi is accused…