One of the most dramatic explorations of a German town in the grip of anti-Semitic passion ever written. In 1900, in a small country town in the eastern reaches of the German Empire, a German boy is found frozen beneath the ice. He has been brutally murdered, the blood drained from his dismembered body. The crime resembles in form traditional blood libel accusations against the Jewsthe kind dramatized in Bernard Malamud's classic The Fixer. When a Jewish butcher is accused of committing the murder, the town explodes in an anti-Semitic fervor. Using vast amounts of previously undiscovered material, Helmut Walser Smith has pieced together the web of false stories and accusations, the abundance of rumor and malice that engulfed this Prussian town. Reminiscent of The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara in its dramatic intensity, The Butcher's Tale presciently anticipates the Nazi pogroms that would descend on Germany three decades latera true historical thriller. Map, illustrations.

Helmut Walser Smith is currently an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University.