The Brothers Schlemiel

This is the complete and unabridged edition of The Brothers Schlemiel

"Wired Words/Electric Prose" —Providence Phoenix


"The Brothers Schlemiel is a delicious and exciting novel of mixed identities told in delicious bite-sized chapters. You won't want to put it down, but if you do, you will come back to it again and again… At last, one of the very first ebooks is restored to its full glory."


Meet Abraham and Adam. From the day they are born, “those Schlemiel twins” are trouble. No one, not even their parents, can tell them apart, which is sometimes an advantage.


They use their wits to create mischievous pranks, foil thieves, meet governors and kings, and eventually begin to grow up. But when Abraham falls in love a Gypsy princess and Adam falls in love with a girl who thinks he’s Abraham, it’s a problem. If they switch places one more time, will they finally find happiness?


Set in Chelm, the famed village of fools, The Brothers Schlemiel is both a tightly interwoven story of two lives, and a rambling picaresque novel filled with rich characters. Originally written as a weekly serial, The Brothers Schlemiel is a book to savor. It's a timeless story that resonates in today's fast-paced digital society.


"To say that Jacob Schlemiel went temporarily insane after the birth of his twin boys might be to overstate it. The poor man certainly had a breakdown. It was as if the mule pulling his wagon down the road of life had suddenly kicked him in the head." So begins one episode of The Brothers Schlemiel. Binder could have also been describing what's happening to traditional publishing. With the arrival of electronic serials and e-books, old-fashioned print is getting something of a kick in the head. As tech-savvy authors like Binder are exploring the Internet's possibilities, traditional publishers are racing to get into the game."

—Providence Phoenix


Dickens For The 21st Century

"I find it exciting that Mr. Binder has put his extensive talents to use on the internet. The return of serialized literature is long overdue and "The Brothers Schlemiel" seems the perfect work to introduce a new generation of readers to a method as traditional as Dickens using technology that Jules Verne could only have dreamed of."

- oso.com


Laughing out loud humor… very poignant and sweet

—Jewish Herald Voice, Houston, TX


"In The Brothers Schlemiel, Mark Binder tries to capture the community of Chelm in all its innocence, foolishness and humor. 'In this work of fiction, history lives in the footnotes,' he declares in his author's note. When history gets in the way of the story, it is easily modified. So it's clear from the start that there is nothing factual about this book, which traces the lives of the Schlemiel family and the community that surrounds them. [Readers] will really get the humor written between the lines. 'Only in Chelm could a father get so lost going to fetch the midwife that he misses the birth of his first child,' Binder writes, poking consistent fun at the antics and idiocy of those who call Chelm home. It seems that everyone in the town is in slow mode, so the mix-ups are many and the potential for laughter abundant

—Jewish Book World

Mark Binder is the award-winning author of Stories for Peace, The Brothers Schlemiel, The Bed Time Story Book, Matzah Mishugas and It Ate My Sister. He is also an award-winning spoken-word recording artist, with titles ranging from Classic Stories for Boys and Girls to It was a dark and stormy night… and A Holiday Present! His latest book is Cinderella Spinderella. He lives in Providence, RI, where he occasionally teaches a college-level course in Telling Lies.