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An unnamed Mexican narrator travels to Bulgaria and Macedonia to find the houses of her father's and mother's families and the Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, that the Sephardic Jews took with them from medieval Spain. The book braids several strands: a travel diary; memories of childhood and family routine; dreams and visions; essay-like reflections on Jewish identity and the history of the language; and poems, letters and invented diaries in Ladino. Around that language gather the dead: her mother, whose death from cancer gives the book its most painful pages, and her sour, almost diabolical grandmother Victoria, with whom she keeps up a running dialogue. Behind them lies the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Bulgaria, Mexico

First published

2012 by Lumen

Author's age

57 when first published

ISBN

9786073111478 (original)

9781934254660 (Les Figues Press, United States)