Morábito intriguingly uses the same false name in two stories: in 'The Sailboat,' an expat calling himself Santibáñez poses as a potential buyer to enter his childhood apartment in 'On the Other Side of the Fence,' a teen hoping to retrieve his tennis ball from the home next to the club declares his mother's name is Santibáñez. Luis reappears in 'Oncologist,' venturing into a neighbor's party to retrieve his keys and finding a stranger's cancer diagnosis left on the sofa. In the titular 'Mothers and Dogs,' Luis tends to his hospitalized, dying mother while his younger brother is tasked with feeding Luis's intimidating mastiff. After translating Morábito's 2021 novel, Home Reading Service, poet and professor Curtis Bauer translates Morabito's first collection of stories into English.

Morábito-born in Egypt, raised in Italy, and identifying as Mexican since age 15-presents global citizens seeking (and missing) connections. The 15 stories of Fabio Morábito's remarkable Mothers and Dogs reflect his own peregrinations through Europe and Mexico. Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer The book derives enormous power from seemingly small details, including the number on the door behind which concentration-camp prisoners are held, and Ephraïm continuing to set the dinner table for four after, 'with plates and silverware for Noémie and Jacques, as he had done every day since their arrest.' This is a gut-wrenching, exceptional work. The bulk of The Postcard involves Berest's inquiries and the painful family stories she uncovers. Sixteen years later, after her daughter's encounter at school, Berest becomes obsessed with finding out who sent the card and learning about her family history. Among the mysteries pertaining to this card: Who sent it? For what purpose? Why is the postage stamp upside down? And why does the card appear to have been purchased 10 years before it was mailed?īerest ( Sagan, Paris 1954) paid no heed to the card when her mother received it. All four were killed at Auschwitz in 1942. Written on the card in an unfamiliar script are the names of four of Lélia's relatives: maternal grandparents Ephraïm and Emma, and two of their children, Noémie and Jacques. On a snowy day in 2003, Anne's mother, Lélia, receives a mysterious postcard in the mail. Her daughter's experience is only the latest indignity endured by Berest's Jewish family. 'They don't like Jews very much at school,' a six-year-old French girl tells her grandmother, Anne Berest's mother, halfway through The Postcard, Berest's brilliant work of autofiction, translated from the French by Tina Kover.

When women were dragons a novel