Above all, this book owes its existence to my grandparents Andrew and Irene Tibor, and to my great uncle and aunt Alfred and Susan Tibor. Deepest gratitude for your patience, belief, and generosity. To my uncle Alfred, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, narrate our family’s stories, and read the draft so carefully. To my grandmother, Anyu, most profound thanks: you read and edited with a poet’s artistry, a dressmaker’s exactitude, and a mother’s sensitivity. The insight you provided could have come from nowhere else.
My husband, Ryan Harty, read this novel countless times, and offered his incomparably acute editorial insight, his deep understanding of character, and his flawless ear for language. At every stage he made me feel that finishing the book was possible and necessary. No words of thanks can ever be enough.
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published materiaclass="underline"
Continuum International Publishing Group: The poem “D’Anne qui luy jecta de la Neige ” from Les Epigrammes by Clément Marot (London: Athlone Press, 1970). Reprinted by permission of Continuum International Publishing Group.
New Directions Publishing Corp., Hamish Hamilton, and Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co.: “It is,” from Unrecounted by W. G. Sebald, translated by Michael Hamburger, copyright © 2004 by The Estate of W. G. Sebald. Copyright © 2003 by Carl Hanser Verlag Müchen. Translation copyright © 2004 by Michael Hamburger. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp., Hamish Hamilton, and Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julie Orringer is the author of the award-winning short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, which was a New York Times Notable Book. She is the winner of The Paris Review’s Discovery Prize and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the writer Ryan Harty.
