What are the Blind Men Dreaming

(Paperback)

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"This is much more than a survival story. It is the story of how the scars of a woman can be and are passed through generations. It is about being a woman, a mother, and a daughter."Gabriela Almeida, Continente

"An infinite work."O Estado de So Paulo

A groundbreaking use of storytelling to bear witness to the Holocaust features three generations of women's own voicesLili's diary written upon liberation from Auschwitz; daughter Noemi Jaffeexploring the power of memory, survival, and bearing witness; and granddaughter Leda, Noemi's daughter, on the significance of the Holocaust and Jewish identity seventy years after the war.

Reviews

"It is said that 'we must never forget,' but, as the world becomes a more volatile place, it becomes easy to wonder if some of those lessons have begun to be forgotten. Compelling pieces of literature from the Jewish diaspora such as Jaffe's novel that make bystanders ask the questions and feel the inexplicable feeling of suffering and survival are more important now than ever." -- Hannah Wise, Dallas Morning News "A thoughtful and moving addition to the canon of Holocaust literature." -- Jewish Book Council Included in Words Without Borders' "September 2016 Watchlist" "Jaffe adds to Brazil's well-established tradition of Jewish writing, which includes the likes of Clarice Lispector and Moacyr Scliar ... What Are the Blind Men Dreaming is an exquisite and original meditation" -- Bruna Dantas Lobato, Ploughshares "An arresting account of the holocaust and expatriation" -- The Culture Trip "A book that fights against oblivion every step of the way--in Stern, writing her story for it to be read by the generations to come, and in Jaffe and Cartum, who meditate on what it means to remember, and to live in the wake of memory. The Holocaust is something that is totalizing in its horror. It resists being thought about or written about." -- Josh Phillips, Moment Magazine "This is much more than a survival story. It is the story of how the scars of a woman can be and are passed through generations. It is about being a woman, a mother and a daughter." -- Gabriela Almeida, Continente "This book of Noemi and her mother, however, is not just another painful story; it is the conclusion that there are no answers for what happened. But there is one certainty: 'You have to remember, we must forget.' This is the key to overcoming a past so infinitely bad. So Noemi turns the story into a mosaic of questions -- and is thus an infinite work." -- O Estadao de Sao Paulo

Author Bio

Noemi Jaffe is an award-winning Brazilian writer whose literary career has exploded in the last five years, gaining critical acclaim and momentum worldwide, with her works being translated into nearly a dozen languages. After working as a teacher of Brazilian Literature for more than 20 years and concluding her academic career with a PhD on the poetry of Antonio Cicero, Noemi Jaffe published a poetry volume, her first publication, in 2005 at the age of 43. At that time, she was already working as a literary reviewer for the cultural supplement of daily Folha de S.Paulo and had published some books on literary theory. From then on, she started dedicating herself more and more to literature, working across several genres, including novels, short stories, essays, and creative nonfiction. Presently, Noemi Jaffe also contributes with a monthly column for the newspaper Valor Economico and for the magazine Harper's Bazaar. She teaches a regular course on Creative Writing at Casa do Saber. She lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Julia Sanches is Brazilian by birth but has lived in New York, Mexico City, Lausanne, Edinburgh, and Barcelona. She is a graduate of Comparative Literature and Literary Translation at UPF in Barcelona, and she completed her M.A. in Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 2010. Her most recent translation is Now and at the Hour of Our Death by Susana Moreira Marques (And Other Stories, 2015). She lives in New York City. Ellen Elias-Bursac has been translating novels and non-fiction by Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian writers for thirty years. A contributing editor to Asymptote Journal, she has taught at the Harvard Slavic Department, Tufts University, Arizona Statue, and the New England Friends of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and spent over six years at the ex-Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague as a translator/reviser in the English Translation Unit. Her translation of David Albahari's book of short stories "Words Are Something Else" was given an award by AATSEEL in 1998, and ALTA's National Translation Award was given to her translation of Albahari's novel "Gotz and Meyer" in 2006. Her translation of Dasa Drndic's novel "Trieste" was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2013 and won not the IFFP, but the IFFP readers award, conferred by a group of some 300 readers. She has co-authored a textbook for the study of Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian with Ronelle Alexander, now in its 2nd edition, is a recipient of an NEA translation grant (2010), and was a fellow at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre in June, 2011. She lives in Boston.