One of our very favorite Indie books of the year is Adventures of Max Spitzkopf, a collection of stories by Jonas Kreppel from the early 20th century, featuring a brilliant detective billed here as “the Yiddish Sherlock Holmes.” Spitzkopf, like Holmes, is a genius investigator and master of disguise assisted by a staunch companion, but he’s distinguished by his Jewishness and dedication to the Jewish people. The stories are now available in English thanks to the sterling efforts of translator Mikhl Yashinsky, who has made Spitzkopf’s adventures accessible to his biggest audience yet. We interviewed Yashinsky via email about his process.

What was it about the book that initially attracted you to the project?

I was familiar with the line from our Yiddish Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, who remembered the books as having first fired his literary fantasy as a boy. That line is how most anyone in this century knew of the Spitzkopf stories, before now at least, as they are almost impossible to find even in Yiddish, having been printed as cheap little pamphlets in 1908. When a bound edition of five of the 15 stories turned up at the Yiddish Book Center [in Amherst, Massachusetts], where I was working at the time, it was like a little treasure being dredged up in the mire.

Were you already a fan of detective fiction?

Yes! I dedicate the book to my father, Dr. Gary Yashinsky, who used to read Encyclopedia Brown as bedtime stories to my brother Sam and me. Later, I graduated to Sherlock Holmes, Spitzkopf’s ostensible model (he is called on the original covers “The Viennese Sherlock Holmes”), though these pulpy, action-packed, wacky little sensation stories are different from Conan Doyle’s slower burns. I loved rendering the settings…and meeting all the virtuous victims and loathsome crooks and killers, the latter rather more fun than the former.

What inspired you during your translation of the text?

I love to listen to music as I translate, something that brings me into the particular spirit of each story, like Oscar Straus’ stately “Bulgaren-marsch,” or Richard Strauss’ dark and misty “Alpensinfonie,” for rendering the story of murder in a mountain resort. The various Strauses and Strausses of Vienna were good for getting me in the mood.

Where and when did you work on the translation?

Most often in cafes in Chelsea, in Brooklyn, and in Amherst when I got an early enough start and when the day was otherwise occupied. If not, then late into the night at my desk, by lamplight.

What was the greatest challenge in translating Kreppel’s work?

The refined Yiddish literati would have called the Spitzkopf stories shund, the label for cheap, lowbrow entertainment that the public loved. Penny dreadfuls. I tried to capture the shundishkaytof the shund—the trashiness of the trash, as I translated—transmitting its antique charm and plentiful thrills but also its delicious foolishness, its soul and sense of fun, its ribaldry and play, amid all the horror of the particular criminal situations. That was the challenge but also the reward.

What book published in 2025 was among your favorites?

The Mother of Yiddish Theatre: Memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, a Yiddish gem as rare as Spitzkopf. I happen to be the translator of that one, too, so I cannot help but give a shout to Madam Kaminska, who wrote this beautiful reminiscence 100 years ago, the year of her death. For the past several years, I’ve been communing across time with the words of her and of Kreppel—two relationships for which my heart is happy.

Arthur Smith is an Indie editor.