Book Club - "Kantika"

Elizabeth  Graver's novel, Kantika ("song" in Ladino) was inspired by her  grandmother Rebecca, who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in  Istanbul and whose tumultuous and shape-shifting life journey took her  to Spain, Cuba, and New York. For Elizabeth, the process of writing  Kantika was also a journey. She interviewed relatives and strangers,  traveled to Turkey, Spain and Cuba, and read deeply to better understand  the worlds of the novel. In this talk, she will provide a  behind-the-scenes look at the writing of Kantika and discuss some of its  central themes, among them music and language crossings, ideas of home,  resilience and joy, and the rich, vanishing culture of Turkish  Sephardic Jews.

Elizabeth  Graver's fifth novel, Kantika is a New York Times Editor's Choice and  the 2023 selection for San Francisco's One Bay One Book Program.  Elizabeth's fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the  2013 National Book Award in Fiction. 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, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The  Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. She teaches at  Boston College. https://elizabethgraver.com/