Join award winning author Elizabeth Graver who will talk about her latest book, Kantika, at the the JCC's December Literary Luncheon/Community Read on Wednesday, December 13 at 11:15 PM.
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. 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.
Elizabeth Graver’s fifth novel, Kantika, was inspired by the migration story of her Turkish Sepharic grandmother, whose journey took her from Turkey to Spain, Cuba and New York. Her 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.