When millions of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews perished in the Holocaust, their stories, culture, and way of life were wiped out. One survivor, the novelist Chaim Grade, made it his life’s mission to keep their memory alive. In scores of stories, poems and novels, Grade faithfully recreated the world he lost in pre-war Europe, vividly reimagining his formative years in Vilna and the yeshivas he attended.

After his death, his wife Ina Hecker kept his Bronx apartment off limits. But after her death in 2010, scholars began clamoring for access to the apartment, hoping to find an unpublished Grade novel.

The new English translation of his novel, Sons and Daughters, is the culmination of that search. The book, translated by Rose Waldman and published by Knopf, is set for release on March 25.

The narrative takes place in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. It describes the breakdown of tradition as modernity makes inroads into the shtetl way of life. Although the Holocaust itself is never mentioned in the book, it is felt on every page, foreshadowing the annihilation of Polish Jewry. It is this tragic awareness that animates Grade’s questioning and demand for answers.

—Excerpted from a review by Yossi Newfield/The Forward