In many respects, the Yiddish story Der retseyekh un di retseyekhte (The Murderer and the Murderess) represents a typical »shundroman.« Published in Zhytomyr in 1875, the fifteen-page booklet depicts a series of passionate crimes that follow many of the genre’s common tropes. Yet, behind the shocking and exciting main storyline, the novel may also be read as leveling unusual social critique at the modernizing tendencies in Jewish society.
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