Kantika A Novel

Elizabeth Graver

eBook - 2023

A dazzling Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home.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. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, 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.Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body—in work, art and... more