Advertisement
Join our no-commitment fiction book club led by Jeanne! This month we're reading: Kantika by Elizabeth Graver. Special for this month, we'll be joined by the book's author for discussion and questions! Kantika was awarded the Massachusetts Book Award, the Julia Ward Howe Award, the Edward Louis Wallant Award and a National Jewish Book Award. It was voted a Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times, NPR and Libby. A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika―“song” in Ladino, the language of Sephardic Jews―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.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Whitelam Books, Bunratty Tavern, 620 Main St, Reading, MA 01867, United States,Reading, Massachusetts
