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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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WHERE TO FIND ME

Alba Arikha

A gripping and poignant tale about loss and chance encounters.
Hannah Karalis, a teenager living with her family in 1980s Notting Hill, becomes fascinated by her neighbour, Flora Dobbs, an enigmatic elderly woman who has clearly had an interesting past but the improbable friendship that the two strike up is abruptly cut short by Flora's sudden departure from the neighbourhood. Nineteen years later, Hannah is astonished to receive a bequest from Flora, a black notebook, which sets her on a search for the truth, leading her to confront the ghosts of an unresolved past.

Transporting the reader from occupied Paris and British Mandate Palestine to contemporary London, Where to Find Me is a gripping and poignant tale of chance encounters, tangled lies and painful discoveries, as well as an inspiring account of how to face and overcome the effects of loss and tragedy in our daily lives.


Alba Arikha is the author of four books: Muse and Walking on Ice, published by Macmillan in 1998 and 2000. Her memoir, Major/Minor, about her adolescence in Paris, was published by Quartet Books, shortlisted for the Spear's awards and selected among the best books of 2012 by the New Yorker. Her last book, a narrative poem, Soon, was set to music and performed as an opera at the Riverside Studios, London. In addition to her books, Alba is also a singer-songwriter, has performed in London and Paris and recorded two CD's. Samuel Beckett was her godfather, she grew up in Paris, and her mother is the poet Anne Atik.
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Book

Published 2018-09-20 by Alma Books - London (UK)

Book

Published 2018-09-20 by Alma Books - London (UK)

Comments

Chinese: CITIC

The story is captivating. She layers chance encounters upon long-grasped secrets and lies; spins mystery and myth out of her characters' clashes with some of the most traumatic history of the 20th century, and explores the legacy of betrayal and tragedy.

Her parents were close friends of Samuel Beckett, who became Alba's god-father and encouraged her to write. Beckett's influence... can be found in her writing. [Where to Find Me] is an ambitious and satisfying novel.

WHERE TO FIND ME by Alba Arikha has been long listed for Wingate Prize 2020! Read more...

Elegant in style, complex and circular in construction, the story of Flora Dobbs comes to us via her unlikely friendship with a London teenager. Two worlds, two eras: an evocative and subtle novel.

The interlinked narratives, voices in counterpoint, harmonise and diverge as Hannah reflects on her own family tragedy and debunks, through her investigation, some of Flora's articles of faith. Richly drawn characters, gorgeous language and the way it folds history delicately within the story of an individual life.

Where to Find Me, the fifth book by Alba Arikha, is the fascinating story of the lives of two women who are destined to become far more important to each other than they could ever have imagined, as well as of the intersecting lives of those closest to them.

In a book of many secrets and clandestine activities, the final clue lies in the title. There are traces of poetry and painting - including a meticulous attention to colour in passages describing Paris, Jerusalem and London.

The looping structure and urgent storytelling of Where To Find Me pull the reader into the strange mechanics of our lives, by which historical cataclysms, dumb accident, momentary whims, and inexplicable desires act to bring us together or keep us apart.

Told in the same carefully-wrought, limpid prose that distinguished Arikha's memoir of her teenage years, Major/Minor, itself a marvellous book. The author, who is the daughter of renowned Franco-Israeli painter Avigdor Arikha, and also Samuel Beckett's goddaughter, has written a beautiful, haunting novel that goes to the heart of questions of identity and belonging.