The Cross and the Pear Tree: A Sephardic Journey - Hardcover

Perera, Victor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0233988874 ISBN 13: 9780233988870

Publisher: Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

Originally published in 1996 and now available in paperback, a biographical account of Victor Perera's search for his roots which provides information about how Sephardic Jews were exiled after the Spanish Inquisition, and details of their arduous struggle for peace and cultural freedom.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

By the author of 'Rites'

Tracing the dramatic lives, through five hundred years, of the old and distinguished family from which he is descended, Victor Perera brilliantly recreates the history not only of his own people, but of an entire culture.

The tale begins in fifteenth-century Spain, where the Inquisition offered Sephardic Jews a choice of conversion, exile or death. It is a story of a rich tradition interrupted by massively cruel events; of persecution, escape and renewal, carrying us across Europe to the Holy Land and Central America. The lives we enter are both fascinating in themselves and emblematic of the Sephardic diaspora: Ana Pereira, a teenage girl who under torture incriminated fifteen of her close relatives; the fabulously wealthy merchant and author Abraham Israel Perera; the beautiful Maria Nunes, abducted to Shakespeare’s England, where she rejected the marriage proposals of a duke; and the brothers Emile and Isaac Pereire, founders of the French railway system.

Finally, 'The Cross and the Pear Tree' is Victor Perera’s search for the grandfather he never knew, and his quest to uncover his own identity and to liberate himself from a generations-old family curse. His book richly brings to life a little-known culture in all its richness, profundity and colour.

About this edition

• Publisher: Andre Deutsch Ltd
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0233988874
• ISBN 13: 9780233988870
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320