Ear­ly in her new book, Lublin, Manya Wilkin­son includes the fol­low­ing chestnut:

The Tsar, dis­turbed by bad dreams, calls a [for­tuneteller] to the Alexan­der Palace to fore­cast his future. ​“You’ll die on a Jew­ish hol­i­day,” the sooth­say­er predicts.

“Which one?” the Tsar asks.

“Any day you die will be a Jew­ish holiday.”

An old joke? Sure. It’s one of a score of jests that Wilkin­son fits into her mod­est­ly sized fable about a trio of young paint­brush sales­men who, in August 1907, leave their vil­lage of Mezritsh and head to Lublin in search of promised rich­es, opu­lence, and freedom.

Jokes like these are essen­tial to Lublin. It’s what the three pro­tag­o­nists — Elya, Kiva, and Ziv — tell each oth­er as they make their tor­tured way toward the city, fend­ing off hunger, Russ­ian bor­der guards, bewitch­ing women, and poor­ly drawn maps. And they serve as small fables with­in the fable.

Like a lot of such tales, each of Lublin​’s pro­tag­o­nists has his own dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ty type: Elya is the ambi­tious striv­er who is the only one tru­ly eager to get to Lublin; Kiva is the sim­ple and reli­gious one, whose uncle, Velv­el, has sent them on this sales expe­di­tion; and Ziv, Kiva’s cousin, is the dys­pep­tic Marx­ist. They rep­re­sent three arche­types of pre­war and soon-to-be extinct Jews in East­ern Europe.

The mood is fes­tive and light at the begin­ning of the book. The three take detours to Prune Town (“the home of the flaki­est cres­cent pas­try”), the Vil­lage of Girls (no fur­ther descrip­tor nec­es­sary), the Vil­lage of Fools (so named because even the worst sales­man can do decent busi­ness), and so on. But as they con­tin­ue on their expe­di­tion, every­thing begins to dark­en before reach­ing apoc­a­lyp­tic heights.

What keeps Lublin from devolv­ing into a mere wise­crack­ing joke is the heft that’s giv­en to the three main char­ac­ters. Indeed, they are friends — sort of. The action is large­ly seen through the eyes of Elya, who is often annoyed by his com­pan­ions’ lack of dri­ve. Elya insists that they must reach their des­ti­na­tion soon, so they should all pick up the pace … even as it becomes obvi­ous that they’re not get­ting any clos­er. One can under­stand why Kiva and Ziv seem more inter­est­ed in turn­ing around and going back the way they came. Which is per­haps a sub­tle but pow­er­ful state­ment on that sad chap­ter of Jew­ish his­to­ry. As much as one want­ed to reverse course and revert to hap­pi­er times, their fate was already sealed.

Like a lot of good jokes, there is a great deal of pain under the surface.