Shifting seamlessly from the past to the present and following the routes of escape across countries and continents, Muñoz Molina evokes people real and imagined who come together in a richly allusive pattern--from Eugenia Ginsburg to Grete Buber-Neumann, the one on a train to the gulag, the other heading toward a Nazi concentration camp; from a shoemaker and a nun who become lovers in a small Spanish town to Primo Levi bound for Auschwitz. From the well known to the virtually unknown--all of Molina's characters are voices of separation, nostalgia, love, and endless waiting.

Written with clarity of vision and passion, in a style both lyrical and accessible, Sepharad makes the experience our own.

A brilliant achievement.