The Moldavian Pimp

In a bar in the Buenos Aires suburb of Villa Crespo a narrator recalls his encounters with an old man of Lithuanian descent, Samuel Warschauer, whom he came to know shortly before the man died.

Among his papers, the narrator found the script of a curious play entitled The Moldavian Pimp, performed in Yiddish in the poor, Jewish area of the city in 1927 and 1928. The play concerned young Jewish girls from the Ukraine recruited by Jewish pimps to go to Argentina on the promises of freedom and a new life, only to find themselves sold into prostitution.

Set in the Argentine capital and Paris, and ranging in time from the 1920s to the present day, Edgardo Cozarinsky's beautiful and moving novel about Jewish immigrants may be among the few records of an extraordinary and little-known twilight society.