The Last of the Just

This Goncourt Prize–winning novel traces Jewish life and persecution across eight centuries, beginning with a 1185 massacre of Jews in York. According to legend, the sole survivor, Rabbi Yom Tov Levy, was blessed as one of the Lamed-Vov—the thirty-six Just Men of Jewish tradition—a distinction passed to one Levy in each generation. The narrative follows this legacy from the Spanish Inquisition through expulsions from England, France, Portugal, Germany, and Russia, to the Polish village of Zemyock, where the Levys lived in relative peace for two centuries. In the twentieth century, Ernie Levy emerges as the Last of the Just, coming of age in 1920s Germany as Hitler rises to power and Auschwitz approaches. First published in French in 1959, the novel spans from medieval times to World War II, documenting the persecutions and displacements that shaped Jewish history.