Klezmer tells a wild tale of love, friendship, survival, and the joy of making music in pre-World War II Eastern Europe. The Baron of My Backside is perfectly content as the leader of a traveling klezmer band, until his bandmates are brutally murdered. He sets out for Odessa alone, inconsolable even after he is joined by Chava, a beautiful girl with a voice like an angel. Meanwhile, Yaacov is expelled from his yeshiva for stealing; he too makes his way to Odessa along with Vincenzo, a violinist, and Tshokola, a gypsy entertainer. When these five misfits finally come together, they must set aside their differences and learn to work together (and rock a crowd) through their music. Tragic, humorous, violent, and tender, Klezmer’s rich watercolor art and simple but moving story-telling draws you into the lives of these fascinating characters.

"In The Rabbi's Cat, Sfar showed a knack for slightly tweaked and jokey mystical fables, a talent he updates with a harsher edge in this first volume of a new series about a band of itinerant Klezmer musicians. While Cat reflected its drowsy, lugubrious North African setting, this tale is darker, edged with a tragic, Eastern European jocularity, a mix of the fantastic and cruel. In Sfar's expressive art, bright splotches of color overflow his wildly looping drawing. In the violent opening, Noah (nicknamed 'The Baron of My Backside') narrowly escapes the massacre of his bandmates by rival musicians. Later in the book, after extracting some revenge, he puts a new band together with the misfits who roam through the intervening pages. They include a pair of former yeshiva students exiled for theft; the baron's voluptuous love interest, Chava; and Tshokola, a less than truthful gypsy on the run from Cossacks. Much of the book has the feel of a goofy, somewhat twisted vaudeville routine, with Sfar's characters meeting under bad circumstances and making light of it via some bad jokes. Deeply suffused with Jewish religious and ethnic identity, the book is profane, messy, jagged and wildly enthusiastic, much like klezmer itself. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Sfar tells a wild tale of love, friendship, survival, and the joy of making music in pre-World War II Eastern Europe. Rich watercolor art and simple but moving storytelling draws readers into the lives of five fascinating characters.