Ilka Weisz is in need not just of friends but 'elective cousins'. She has left her home in New York to accept a junior teaching post at the prestigious Concordance Institute, a liberal college in bucolic Connecticut. But how can she, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, find a new set to belong to - a surrogate family? Might the Shakespeares - the institute's director and his wry, acerbic wife - hold the key?
In these interlinked New Yorker stories, Lore Segal evokes the comic melancholy of the outsider and the ineffectual ambitions of a progressive, predominantly WASP-ish institution. Tragedy and loss haunt characters as they plan an academic symposium on genocide, while their privileged lives contrast starkly with those on a derelict housing project next door.
Includes the acclaimed New Yorker podcast story, "The Reverse Bug".
- ISBN10 1914502108
- ISBN13 9781914502101
- Publish Date 25 July 2024
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Sort of Books
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 256
- Language English