Elizabeth Graver on Kantika

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Elizabeth Graver will speak and answer questions about her acclaimed novel Kantika, which is the One Bay One Book selection for 2023-2024.

From Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, Kantika sings of the joys, hopes, and devastation experienced by twentieth-century Sephardi emigres. Rebecca Cohen’s odyssey begins amid a settled, privileged childhood embraced by generations of well-to-do Ladino speakers. It quickly devolves through loss of home, a tragic marriage, and decrease of family cohesion. Rebecca’s indomitable resilience, good sense, and traditional values propel her across international boundaries and expectations as she becomes a thoroughly original American. 

Elizabeth Graver is a professor of English at Boston College. Kantika is her fifth novel.

Read reviews of Kantika from The New York Times, the Jewish Review of Books, and Lilith.

A remarkable, lyrical work . . . Graver has written an elegant coming-of-age story that is also an epic of the Sephardi diaspora, spanning generations, wars, and continents.”
—Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Jewish Review of Books

“A gorgeous accomplishment. In intimate and inventive prose, Elizabeth Graver carries us to the vibrantly drawn streets of Constantinople and Barcelona, Havana and New York. We follow her remarkable characters through grief and hope, and into human connections as delicate as they are profound.”
—Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink

Program made possible, in part, by Anne Germanacos.