Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted

By: Gary Barwin

Narrated by: Allen Lewis Rickman, Gabi Epstein

A middle-aged Jewish man who fantasizes about being a cowboy goes on an eccentric quest across Europe after the 1941 Nazi invasion of Lithuania in this wild and witty yet heartrending novel from the best-selling author of Yiddish for Pirates, shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Motl is middle-aged, poor, nerdy, Jewish, and in desperate need of a shave. Since having his balls shot cleanly off as a youth in WWI, he's lived a quiet life at home in Vilnius with his shrewd and shrewish mom, Gitl, losing himself in the masculine fantasy world of cowboy novels by writers like Karl May - novels equally loved by Hitler, whose troops have just invaded Lithuania and are out to exterminate people like Motl. In his dreams, Motl is a fast-talking, rugged, expert gunslinger capable of dealing with the Nazi threat. But only in his dreams.

As friends and neighbors are killed around them, Motl and Gitl escape from Vilnius, saving their own skins. But they immediately risk everything to try rescue relatives they hope are still alive. With death all around him, Motl decides that a Jew's best revenge is not only to live, but to procreate. In order to achieve this, though, he must relocate those most crucial pieces of his anatomy lost to him in a glacier in the Swiss Alps in the previous war. It's an absurd yet life-affirming mission, made even more urgent when he's separated from his mother and isn't sure whether she's alive or dead. Joining forces, and eventually hearts, with Esther, a Jewish woman whose family has been killed, Motl ventures across Europe, a kaleidoscope of narrow escapes and close encounters with everyone from Himmler, to circus performers, double agents, quislings, fake "Indians", and real ones. Motl at last figures out that he has more connection to the Indigenous characters in Western novels than the cowboys.

An imaginative and deeply felt exploration of genocide, persecution, colonialism, and masculinity - saturated in Gary Barwin's sharp wit and perfect pun-play - Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy is a one-of-a-kind novel of sheer genius.

©2021 Gary Barwin (P)2021 Penguin Random House Canada

Critic reviews

Winner of the 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction

“[A] boundary-pushing [and]...very funny book.... There are few voices in Canadian writing as original as Barwin’s.” (Toronto Star)

“This is a novel steeped in history and truths - and ingenuity.... An adventure story set in horrific times, this novel manages to be darkly funny and packed with wisdom.” (The Globe and Mail)

“[D]arkly humorous and affecting...the fantastic one-liners deepen the poignancy of the horrors. This inventive, madcap novel is a stunning testament to Jewish humor and survival.” (Publishers Weekly)