A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Originally published in 1992 to much acclaim with The New York Times Book Review calling it "a fable of fantastical lushness, reminiscent of the best fairy tales." Overlook Press will be reissuing this title in 2017 following the success of Septimania.

Jonathan Levi's lyrical and gorgeous debut novel, A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED, originally published more than twenty years ago to extraordinary reviews, is being reissued by Overlook Press. Indeed, it is an intricately crafted modern fairy tale that weaves together narratives from throughout history to display fantastical tapestries of the human experience. The novel explores the bewitched town of Mariposa, Spain, where two women bond over being stranded and begin a search for a mysterious man. To pass the time, they exchange increasingly haunting and inventive stories that take readers to Moses Maimonides' Egypt, Spain during the infamous inquisition and Holocaust era Germany. The novel evokes universal themes of loss as well as the power of art and offers readers a unique journey through time.

Jonathan Levi was a founding editor of Granta, and its U.S. Editor through 1987, when he left to write his first novel, A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED, which was called "a fable of fantastical lushness, reminiscent of the best fairy tales," (The New York Times Book Review) and compared to "the outrageous satire of Monty Python, and the globetrotting of Vanity Fair," (Washington Post), "while also bearing the mark of such fabulists as Guenter Grass and Gabriel García Marquez." (Newsday) Jonathan's short stories and articles have appeared in Granta, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Terra Nova, The Nation and The New York Times, among many others. For many years, Jonathan served as Fiction Critic for The Los Angeles Times Book Review. He lives in Rome, Italy and began writing SEPTIMANIA as a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio.