Synopses & Reviews
"Moving and astonishing." -- Richard Eder, The New York Times
From one of Spain's most celebrated writers comes an extraordinary book that draws on the Sephardic diaspora, the Holocaust, and Stalin's purges to tell a twentieth-century story. Shifting seamlessly from the past to the present and following the routes of escape across countries and continents, Antonio Muñoz Molina evokes people real and imagined who come together in a richly allusive patternfrom Eugenia Ginzburg to Grete Buber-Neumann, the one on a train to the gulag, the other heading toward a Nazi concentration camp; from a shoemaker and a nun who become lovers in a small Spanish town to Primo Levi bound for Auschwitz. From the well known to the virtually unknownall of Molina's characters are voices of separation, nostalgia, love, and endless waiting.
Shame and guilt, homelands and exile, ceaseless wanderings and bitter alienations both internal and external, metaphorical and real, are persistent motifs of Muñoz Molina's remarkable novel--one that turns out to be about a territory far vaster than Sepharad itself: Europe, perhaps even the world . . . A masterpiece." -- Daniel Mendelsohn, The New York Review of Books
"Muñoz Molina writes the novels of the people he's met and imagined, gleaning from the names he encounters stories that vibrate beneath the burden of history, that lift with the breath of human life." Los Angeles Times Book Review
ANTONIO MUÑOZ MOLINA has twice been awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura in Spain in addition to winning the Prix Femina in France. He lives in Madrid and New York.
Review
PRAISE FOR
SEPHARAD"Moving and often astonishing."Richard Eder, The New York Times "An amazing book. The Margaret Sayers Peden translation is excellent. Read it."The Washington Post Book World
Synopsis
From one of Spain's most celebrated writers, an extraordinary, inspired bookat once fiction, history, and memoirthat draws on the Sephardic diaspora, the Holocaust, and Stalin's purges to tell a twentieth-century story.
Shifting seamlessly from the past to the present and following the routes of escape across countries and continents, Muñoz Molina evokes people real and imagined who come together in a richly allusive patternfrom Eugenia Ginsburg to Grete Buber-Neumann, the one on a train to the gulag, the other heading toward a Nazi concentration camp; from a shoemaker and a nun who become lovers in a small Spanish town to Primo Levi bound for Auschwitz. From the well known to the virtually unknownall of Molina's characters are voices of separation, nostalgia, love, and endless waiting.
Written with clarity of vision and passion, in a style both lyrical and accessible, Sepharad makes the experience our own.
A brilliant achievement.
Synopsis
From one of Spain's most celebrated writers comes an extraordinary, inspired book--at once fiction, history, and memoir--that draws on the Sephardic diaspora, the Holocaust, and Stalin's purges to tell a 20th-century story.
About the Author
ANTONIO MUÑOZ MOLINA is the author of thirteen novels and has twice been awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura (the Spanish equivalent of the National Book Award). He lives in Madrid.
Table of Contents
Sacristan
Copenhagen
Those Who Wait
Silencing Everything
Valdemún
Oh You, Who Knew So Well
Münzenberg
Olympia
Berghof
Cerbère
Wherever The Man Goes
Scheherazade
America
You Are...
Narva
Tell Me Your Name
Sepharad