An Absence of Cousins : A Novel

Author: Segal, Lore

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 25 July 2024 by SORT OF BOOKS in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 256 pages
130 x 198 x 24 | 300g

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'.