The Jade Cat
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Brøgger’s lively and insightful novel chronicles the fates of the Jewish Løvin family as they endure the tragicomic events of the 20th century.” —Publishers Weekly
From Denmark to Riga and back, through two World Wars, to India and Afghanistan, to America as it was and as it is, and through boarding schools, mental hospitals, and almshouses for the poor, Suzanne Brøgger’s The Jade Cat is a sweeping family saga of almost limitless ambition.
At the heart of the narrative and of this Jewish family unit is the grandmother, Katze, and her memories. She tells the story from her patrician apartment in Copenhagen’s Gammel Mønt 14, where she has lived since the 1940s. It is a haunting portrait of the pride, conceit, grandness, and despair that has followed the Løvin family while the world outside the old apartment gradually fell apart. The family remains prey to drug addiction and suicide attempts. Some escape into sex, others into Evangelical politics or religion. With an unlikely but sympathetic cast of grotesques, this gripping saga of Danish highlife and lowlife through three generations of a tormented family is as diverse and uncompromising as William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits.
“The novel, unabashedly autobiographical, concentrates on the inheritances of character, courage, and nonconformity from one woman to another.” —Tablet
“[A] panoramic and often comic chronicle . . . A roman-fleuve of the Løvin family, based on memories and letters from Brøgger’s own family.” —The Telegraph
“A further index of this novelist’s originality and power.” —The Independent
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Br gger's lively and insightful novel chronicles the fates of the Jewish L vin family as they endure the tragicomic events of the 20th century and adhere to patriarch Max's injunction: "Thou shalt be a personality." Forging an identity, however, becomes complicated when the family is torn apart by war and forced to abandon its religious identity and nationality. Although the novel expands its breadth by including anecdotes about even the most minor players, the narrative's emphasis is on three generations of women strong-willed Katze; her daughter, Li, who comes of age during WWII; and Li's eldest daughter Zeste. Hypocrisy, particularly with regard to gender-appropriate sexual conduct, is a major issue for all three, though each fares badly in the battle of the sexes. Attitudes toward Jewish identity animosity, denial, ambivalence also provide a common link among the stories. Br gger offers readers a powerful, personal account of rapidly changing times through the lens of a family whose comedies, tragedies and absurdities are magnified by historical context and whose contemporary descendants provide a glimpse of a more hopeful future.
