SEPHARAD: A NOVEL

New York City, NY: Harcourt Books, 2003. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Harcourt Books, 2003. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 385 pages. The author's second novel to be translated into English. One of the greatest books of our time. Review Copy. Review Materials laid-in. Marks, as such, the very first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the British Edition and the Softcover Edition. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Antonio Munoz Molina's "Sefarad" in a brilliant English translation by the indispensable Margaret Sayers Peden. "Sepharad" being the name of Spain (and the Iberian Peninsula) given to it by her Jewish settlers, the "Sephardic" Jews as opposed to the "Ashkenazi" Jews of Northern Europe, especially Germany. "From one of Spain's most celebrated writers, an extraordinary, inspired book. At once fiction, history, and memoir that draws on the Sephardic Diaspora, the Holocaust, and Stalin's Great Purge, to tell a twentieth-century story. Shifting seamlessly from the past to the present and following the routes of escape across countries and continents, Munoz 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 to a Nazi concentration camp; from a shoemaker and a nun who become lovers in a small town in Spain to Primo Levi bound for Auschwitz. And others - some well-known, others unknown - all 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" (Publisher's blurb). An absolute "must-have" title for Antonio Munoz Molina collectors. This is a Review Copy. The Review Materials are laid-in. It is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed, dated, and inscribed in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "Ida y vuelta [written at the top of the page] A. Munoz Molina January 2014". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. The inscription is Spanish for "roundtrip", which expression succinctly sums up the novel's theme of departure and return. This title is a great book. This is the only such signed, dated, and inscribed Review Copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Precedes and should NOT be confused with the British Edition and the Softcover Edition. Copies available online have serious flaws or are subsequent printings. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. "Sepharad" is regarded as a masterpiece by Mario Vargas Llosa, and in an influential essay on the book, by Daniel Mendelsohn. One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. . ISBN 0151009015.