In conversation with Idra Novey, moderated by Julie Maloney
2:30 – 3:10 at St. Peter’s Parish Hall
About the author
Elizabeth Graver is the author of Kantika, which is currently being translated into German and Turkish. Her novel The End of the Point was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award. 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 appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. She is the mother of two daughters and teaches at Boston College.
MFOB featured book: Kantika
Kantika (“song” in Ladino) was inspired by Graver’s grandmother Rebecca, who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul and whose shape-shifting life journey took her to Spain, Cuba, and New York. A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika 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 must start anew in Barcelona, 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.
