Kantika

Description

National Jewish Book Award Winner
Massachusetts Book Award Winner
The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year

From award-winning author of The End of the Point comes a dazzling Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home.

A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika–“song” in Ladino–follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way–a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge–her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.

Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body–in work, art and love–serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one’s one and only life.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Elizabeth Graver
Published: 04/16/2024
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 9781250869838
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 0.80″ H x 8.29″ L x 5.46″ W

About the Author
Graver, Elizabeth: – Elizabeth Graver‘s fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award and selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her other novels are Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and Prize Stories, the O. Henry Awards. She teaches at Boston College.