by Alan Isler
First published 1995
Otto Korner directs his fellow residents at the Emma Lazarus retirement home in a production of Hamlet. The Holocaust survivor finds himself thrown into turmoil when a new employee arrives who looks exactly like a woman he once loved. As Otto rehearses Shakespeare with his eccentric castmates, memories flood back from his long life across two continents. He recalls his youth as an aspiring poet, his encounters with Lenin and the Dada movement in World War I Zurich, his marriages, and his survival of the Holocaust. The retirement home buzzes with rivalries, romances, and petty feuds among its residents. Otto struggles to keep his buried secrets hidden, but the approaching performance forces him to confront truths about himself he thought were safely in the past. His memories interweave with the present drama as opening night approaches. The story builds to the evening of the first public performance, when Otto's final secret emerges and he must face the moral complexities of choices made long ago.
Genres: drama, romance, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adult-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Emma Lazarus Retirement Home, Zurich
Period: World War I, World War II
256 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: death, mental-illness