The rise of David Levinsky Free PDF novel by Abraham Cahan

It is well written and arresting, but rambles too much at times, which although digressive, adds to the effect of genuine storytelling. Some of the thoughts the narrator offers about life after one gets all the success and fame one can dream of were really insightful.The main character, David Levinsky, is born in 1865 in Antomir, a city of 80,000 in the Kovno district of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania). His father dies when he is three, leaving him and his mother to fend for themselves. He grows up in abject poverty, he and his mother sharing a single basement room with three other families.His mother scrounges together money (largely from wealthier relatives) to send him to a private cheder for elementary instruction in Judaism and the Torah because the public cheder is known for the inferiority of their education. When payments are late, the headmaster threatens to throw David out of school; his mother convinces the headmaster to let him stay, promising to pay every penny. Owing to his poverty, he suffers frequent abuse at the hands of the teachers, who cannot take their aggression out on the richer students. From all of this abuse, he becomes one of the tougher kids. But also he excels academically