Louisa by Simone Zelitch
"Remember the genius with which Jane Smiley retold the story of King Lear and his daughters on a thousand acres of Iowa farmland? It is with the same such genius that Simone Zelitch transforms the Biblical story of the widow Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth. Louisa left me stuttering with admiration. What a fine book it is, and utterly compelling."
- Bob Shacochis, author of Swimming in the Volcano
Putnam Hardcover ISBN: 0399146598 $ 24.95
September 2000
About the Book:
"I smoked my first cigarette when I
was six years old.... Now where the
hell can I get a cigarette?"
The year is 1949 and Nora, a prickly, strong-willed survivor of the Holocaust, has just walked off the boat in Haifa with her German daughter-in-law, Louisa. Nora expects to be met by her cousin Bela, a Zionist and war hero she has loved since they were children. But Bela fails to appear, and the women enter an absorption camp for immigrants to await an uncertain future. How will they fit into a society that does not believe in looking back? Louisa, the daughter of Nazi parents, proves a genius at self-invention-in many ways the perfect Israeli. Nora is neither heroic nor optimistic, yet she has no other home. When rumors swirl around the camp, she responds with a cranky and ironic distance that rises like a wall of barbed wire. What is she protecting behind that wall? The past, and its secrets.
In Louisa, Simone Zelitch brings to life, with all the authority and inventive power of an old master, a story of hidden passion, broken dreams, and unexpected reconciliation. Stranded in a new land that asks them to look to the future, both women are forced to face the past and the responsibility each bears for what they have lost. Nora knows how to survive. Louisa must teach her how to forgive.
Reviews:
"Superb . . . seamless interweaving of observation, memory, and imagination . . .
A mature and absorbing story of sacrifice, illusion, and resignation, and an important contribution to the literature of Holocaust and Exodus."
- Kirkus Reveiws (starred review) August 1, 2000
"Zelitch's narrative teases with emotional puzzles and surprises with unexpected developments. She shows virtuosic skill with background and atmosphere."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review) July 24, 2000
"The steady voices of the characters hold the novel together, as memory leads through to memory again. Those voices hold the reader through the strange and unlikely tales of this
fascinating book."
- Book Page September 2000
"Zelitch's talent shines in the well-paced epic novel."
- Booklist (boxed, starred review) August 2000
"I admire Simone Zelitch's ability to capture the essence of life in pre- and mid-Holocaust Europe. The parallel to the Book of Ruth lends new insight to both stories."
- Pearl Abraham (author of The Romance Reader)
"A remarkable book . . . handled with unforced authority from first to final line."
- Nicholas Delbanco (author of The Lost Suitcase)
Review by Leora Bersohn, October/November2000, part of the New Fiction Forum, Boston Review, a space for wide-ranging dialogue about contemporary fiction, a dialogue founded on a simple premise: that despite the intense commercialism of current publishing, there are original vital novels published every season and readers to whom such narratives are of the profoundest importance.
Simone Zelitch's first novel, The Confession of Jack Straw (1991) won the Hopwood Award. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Michigan, she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Hungary. Zelitch, a recipient of a Pennsyvania Council of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, currently teaches at Community College of Philadelphia.
Read
an excerpt (BookBrowse)
Book
Reporter Author Profile
Reading
Group Guide for Louisa
Penguin Putnam
Shavuot: The Book of Ruth
This is a brief summary of The Book of Ruth, traditionally read
on Shavuot.
News:
The Samuel Goldberg & Sons Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers is a new initiative of the New Leadership Council. In 2000, the inaugural year of the Goldberg Prize, the NLC honored Nathan Englander for his book For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. The 2001 recipient of the prize is Simone Zelitch for her book Louisa. This spring, Makor will host an event for Ms. Zelitch to read from her book and be honored by the NLC.
Jacket design Royce M. Becker
Jacket photograph (detail of face) Dennis Galante/FPG
Photograph of the author: Douglas Buchholz
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