One hundred Saturdays – 9781800815377

Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2024

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE YEAR

NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER

‘Beautiful, sober and affecting – a testament to remembrance and friendship’ – DALIA SOFER

‘A momentous historic retrieval and work of literary art’ – PHILLIP LOPATE

Nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never shared the full details of her past with anyone. That is until she met Michael Frank, and asked him to help her polish a talk she was to give about life in the Juderia of Rhodes. Neither of them could know that this was the first of one hundred Saturdays that they would spend in each other’s company.

Courageous and sharp, elegant and sly, Stella is a formidable modern Scheherazade whose Saturday instalments give a window into the vibrant, vanished world of the Jews of Rhodes. She unspools for the first time the long threads of her history – from the sun-soaked shores of her childhood, to the fifteen harrowing months she spent in camps scattered throughout Europe, and finally to the United States and New York as one of only 150 Jews from Rhodes to survive.

Featuring colour illustrations based on Stella’s family photographs, One Hundred Saturdays is an unusual and extraordinary memoir. It is a testament to the soul-saving power of relationships; to memories revisited; to resilience. It’s not only a vital slice of history that has largely been ignored, but a story of the possibility of an ever-evolving self, even after confronting Hell.