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"""Graver delivers a luminous story of a Sephardic family. Fans of family epics will love this."" --Publishers Weekly ""Beautiful and lyrical. [Kantika] is a piece of transnational, century-spanning Jewish history."" --Kirkus Reviews ""Intimately imagined, lyrically written, and rich with historical detail, Kantika weaves forced displacement, wild reinvention and triumphant healing into a big, border-crossing family saga. Marvelous!"" --Gish Jen, author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon ""Both epic and heartfelt, Kantika belongs in the company of the great twentieth-century immigrant Jewish writers, such as Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, and Henry Roth."" --Joshua Henkin, author of Morningside Heights ""Kantika is an acute and compassionate portrait of displacement and reinvention, and it sings."" --Michael Frank, author of One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World ""A gorgeous accomplishment. In intimate and inventive prose, Elizabeth Graver carries us to the vibrantly drawn streets of Constantinople, Barcelona, Havana and New York. We follow her remarkable characters through grief and hope, and into human connections as delicate as they are profound. This is a novel to get lost in."" --Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink ""This utterly captivating novel illuminates how one family's history is history. Astonishing work, reminiscent, to my mind, of the best of the great Italian writer Elsa Morante."" --Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others ""From the first page, I was swept up and carried along on the migrations of an unforgettable family. Kantika is a gripping story of 20th-century Sephardic exile and reinvention and the longing for homes, both old and new."" --Tova Mirvis, author of The Book of Separation ""In gorgeous detail, this epic family story restores a lost time and place. Kantika is both an immigrant tale and a hero's journey as Graver's extraordinary characters--first among them the indomitable Rebecca--travel between worlds and find ways to refashion their lives."" --Allegra Goodman, author of Sam ""Kantika is a beautiful, moving and splendidly entertaining evocation of a lost world. Elizabeth Graver looks back at family history with a novelist's eye and a poet's empathy."" --John Banville, author of The Singularities ""'The past feels heavy, the present thin, ' Rebecca muses after Lika's departure for the U.S. The phrase is a fitting description for Graver's novel, where the weight of the past and the ephemeral nature of the present tangle together to create a bewitching whole."" --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams"

"A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR ""This exquisitely imagined family saga spans cultures and continents."" --New York Times, Editors' Choice & 100 Notable Books of 2023 ""A highly readable and poignant tale of dislocation, refuge and resilience."" --NPR, Best Books of 2023 ""In Graver's vision, migration is never simply a one-way street... Kantika is a meticulous endeavor to preserve the memories of a family, an elegy and a celebration both."" --Ayten Tartici, The New York Times ""Graver delivers a luminous story of a Sephardic family. Fans of family epics will love this."" --Publishers Weekly ""Beautiful and lyrical. [Kantika] is a piece of transnational, century-spanning Jewish history."" --Kirkus Reviews ""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 ""Graver's paean to resolve and resiliency paints a vivid portrait of spirit and grit."" --Carol Haggas, Booklist ""Enigmatic and enticing . . . Graver crafts a compelling narrative, weaving in threads of religion and history, feminism and family dynamics, passion and duty, survival and love ."" --Katie Noah Gibson, Shelf Awareness ""Graver's characters are rendered so realistically that the reader aches as the world turns against them, but the ever-resourceful Rebecca perseveres."" --Reba Leiding, Library Journal, starred review ""Beautiful and lyrical. Kantika is a piece of transnational, century-spanning Jewish history."" --Karen Skinazi, Jewish Journal ""In the end, Kantika's heroine triumphs not in a larger-than-life way, but in a way that makes her feel relatable . . . We, too, are invited to enter into the story and make a place for ourselves."" --Nina B. Lichtenstein, Jewish Book Council ""Intimately imagined, lyrically written, and rich with historical detail, Kantika weaves forced displacement, wild reinvention and triumphant healing into a big, border-crossing family saga. Marvelous!"" --Gish Jen, author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon ""Both epic and heartfelt, Kantika belongs in the company of the great twentieth-century immigrant Jewish writers, such as Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, and Henry Roth."" --Joshua Henkin, author of Morningside Heights ""Kantika is an acute and compassionate portrait of displacement and reinvention, and it sings."" --Michael Frank, author of One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World ""A gorgeous accomplishment. In intimate and inventive prose, Elizabeth Graver carries us to the vibrantly drawn streets of Constantinople, Barcelona, Havana and New York. We follow her remarkable characters through grief and hope, and into human connections as delicate as they are profound. This is a novel to get lost in."" --Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink ""This utterly captivating novel illuminates how one family's history is history. Astonishing work, reminiscent, to my mind, of the best of the great Italian writer Elsa Morante."" --Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others ""From the first page, I was swept up and carried along on the migrations of an unforgettable family. Kantika is a gripping story of 20th-century Sephardic exile and reinvention and the longing for homes, both old and new."" --Tova Mirvis, author of The Book of Separation ""In gorgeous detail, this epic family story restores a lost time and place. Kantika is both an immigrant tale and a hero's journey as Graver's extraordinary characters--first among them the indomitable Rebecca--travel between worlds and find ways to refashion their lives."" --Allegra Goodman, author of Sam ""Kantika is a beautiful, moving and splendidly entertaining evocation of a lost world. Elizabeth Graver looks back at family history with a novelist's eye and a poet's empathy."" --John Banville, author of The Singularities ""A story of immigration, tenacity, family bonds and change that sits in a liminal space between fact and fiction, making for fascinating reading."" --Jaime Herndon, Hadassah Magazine ""[Kantika] is about a wealthy Turkish Jewish family whose fortunes are reversed by the First World War and whose members are dispersed to Barcelona, Cuba and finally New York. And yet while it has all the drama one might expect from such journeys and the novels about them, it remains both lyrical and literary, and likely, if there is any justice, to stand the test of time."" --Andrew Silow-Carroll, Jewish Telegraphic Agency ""Kantika, like the songs Rebecca sings, is full of sorrow and joy--and very beautiful."" --Rachel Hall, Lilith Magazine ""Writing with such candor is a feat . . . A lush but unsentimental drama."" --The Forward ""A beautifully written story of loss and love, of survival and sanctuary, of a search for home and identity. At its heart, it is a story of family."" --Jennifer Huberdeau, The Berkshire Eagle ""Ladino music threads its way through the text and provides a constant, unifying metaphor for the novel: whether sad or joyous, sacred or secular, personal history or fiction, Kantika sings."" --Susan Lowell, Historical Novel Society, Editors' Choice ""Kantika is Elizabeth Graver's poignant homage to her grandmother, but it is also a testament to her talent as a storyteller, to make a narrative so believable and compelling, and, indeed, sometimes funny, just as it is in life."" --Roberta Silman, The Arts Fuse ""Graver's lyrical prose sets the tone for the impressive story she's about to tell."" --Susan Blumberg-Kason, Asian Review of Books ""The Sephardi woman has finally entered the literary conversation. I hope she's here to stay."" --Hannah Srour-Zackon, The Canadian Jewish News"

Author Information

Elizabeth Graver's fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award and selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. 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, Best American Essays, and Prize Stories, the O. Henry Awards. She teaches at Boston College.

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