Cafe Scheherazade: Text Classics

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In Acland Street, St Kilda, there stands a cafe called Scheherazade.

Thus begins Arnold Zables haunting meditation on displacement, and the way the effects of war linger in the minds of its survivors. In this deeply moving book we meet Avram and Masha, proprietors of the cafe, and hear the tales that they and their fellow storytellers have to offer: of Yossel stalking the streets of Shanghai and Warsaw, of Laizer imprisoned in the Soviet city of Lvov, and of Zalman marooned in Vilna and Kobe. And we learn how Avram and Masha met and fell in love and came to create their Melbourne cafe together.

In this mesmerising book, at once fable and history, fiction becomes a way of remaining faithful to the stories of cities strung across the globe like pearls on a string, to the maps and narratives etched in the minds of old men talking in a cafe by the sea.

Reviews

All great stories, says Zable, must have both beauty and terror. A story which has only terror adds to the darkness. A story which has only beauty cannot be true. * Age *
Cafe Scheherazadetranscends the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.... lyrical poetic * Ivor Indyk, Sydney Morning Herald *
a homage to the power of story telling as well as a meditation on displacement and its aftermath. * Canberra Times *
Stories are delicate things, attached to people, mutable and ephemeral. Carrying them on entails a certain responsibility. In this sense, Zable relinquishes the role of author and becomes a scribe for a community whose stories might otherwise be lost. * Australian Review of Books *

Author Bio

Arnold Zable is a highly acclaimed novelist, storyteller and human rights advocate. His works include Scraps of Heaven, Violin Lessons,The Fighter, which was shortlisted for a Victorian Premiers Literary Award and a New South Wales Premiers Literary Award and his most recent work The Watermill. Zable lives in Melbourne.