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Richard Zimler USA/Portugal
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© Hernani Pereira |
Richard
Zimler was born in suburban New York in 1956. He studied Music and Comparative
Religion at Duke University (North Carolina) and later received a Master of
Print Journalism from Stanford University (California). After working as an
editor and freelance writer for seven years, he moved to Porto, Portugal in
1990, where he teaches Journalism at the Escola Superior de Jornalismo.
Since 1989, he has published short stories in British and American literary
magazines and has become a bestselling novelist.
In 1989,
Zimler began to publish short stories in British literary and American literary
magazines. His first novel, The Last Kabbalist of
Lisbon, became an immediate bestseller. It constitutes the first part of
the “Sephardic Cycle”, a series of independent works exploring Jewish history
through the lives of different generations and branches of a single family. The
Last Kabbalist of Lisbon is a literary mystery set among secret Jews in
Lisbon in 1506. In April that year, during Passover celebrations, around two
thousand of Lisbon’s New Christians - Jews forcibly converted to Christianity
in 1497 - were murdered in a pogrom. The story of the sequel novel Hunting
Midnight is set in the early 19th century and touches on a number of issues
familiar to readers of Richard Zimler, including Jewish mysticism and the
forced conversion of Portuguese Jews. New, on the other hand, are the themes of
African magic and slavery.
I loved The Last Kabbalist
of Lisbon.
John le Carré
It’s a wonderful novel: a big, hold-hearted love
story that will sweep you up and take you, uncomplaining, on a journey full of
heartbreak and light.
Nicolas Shakespeare on Hunting Midnight
The third
novel, Guardian of the Dawn, takes place in the early 16th century, when
the Portuguese conquered the Indian province of Goa from the Sultan of Bijapur.
After establishing the Inquisition, they converted
tens of thousands of Hindus or immigrant Jews to Christianity. Berekiah Zarco,
a Jewish manuscript illuminator, is arrested by the Portuguese Inquisition in
Goa in the 16th century. Sensing he hasn’t enough strength to continue defying
them while being tortured, he commits suicide. His son Tiago tries to find
out who set this tragedy in motion, determined to take revenge even if it
causes his own death.
Parallels with Shakespeare’s Othello are not
accidental but nothing, to the smallest detail, is accidental with a writer who
has fairly been called an American Umberto Eco.
The Advertiser
An exciting adventure story... Scrupulously
researched... Fascinating.
The Independent
The Search
for Sana, however, is set in our present time: At a writers' festival,
Richard Zimler met the performer Sana whom he found enormously charismatic. The
following evening she jumped to her death. This deeply affected him and
launched him into an intense, three-year investigation of her past. He
uncovered the story of a boundary-crossing friendship between two girls who
grew up in Haifa in the 1950s. The Search for Sana vividly depicts the
Palestinian and Israeli conflict without taking sides. Richard Zimler succeeds
in integrating historical background details into the narration of an
action-packed and colourful individual fate.
The Seventh
Gate constitutes the fourth part of the “Sephardic Cycle”.
Berlin, 1932. Sophie is an intelligent
fourteen-year-old coming of age. She is forced to lead a double life between
her Nazi family and her Jewish friends, working against the government in a
secret group called the Ring.
At the same
time, she fears for the safety of her younger autistic brother Hansi. When
Hansi's sterilization order comes, Sophie fights with all her ingenuity and
guile to save him. In the end, however, she is forced to make a deadly
betrayal.
Through successive mysteries, reversals, and
surprises - and across a race against time -, The Seventh Gate is at one and
the same time a love story and tragedy - and a tale of ferocious heroism.
The Seventh Gate is not only a superb thriller but an
intelligent and moving novel about the heartbreaking
human condition.
Alberto Manguel
The Warsaw Anagrams is a historical thriller set in Warsaw's Jewish
ghetto, magnificently written and making your hair stand on end.
When Erik's
nephew Adam's lifeless body appears on the surrounding wire fence, Erik swears
to avenge his murder – and brings to light the most abject perversions of the
Nazi ideology. In this profoundly moving and dark thriller, Erik takes the
readers into Warsaw's most forbidden territories and into the most heroic
chambers of the human heart.
Richard Zimler has been deservedly called “an American Umberto Eco.” The Warsaw Anagrams is equal parts riveting, heartbreaking, inspiring and intelligent.
San
Francisco Chronicle
Zimler surpasses himself with this epic.
Publishers
Weekly
The Jewish Dan Brown.
Forward
A truly different book.
O
Público
Written with the effortless delicacy and subtle unnerving quality that so many readers have come to enjoy in Zimler.
Visão
A story that sucks us down into its very pages only to spit us out
violently again at the end.
Sol
The Warsaw Anagrams
is simultaneously a novel of great simplicity and perspicacity.
La
Repubblica
Zimler’s
latest work Strawberry Fields
Forever is an insightful and darkly
funny coming-of-age novel telling the story of Teresa, a witty and sensitive
15-year-old whose stability and sense of identity are threatened when she is
forced to move from Lisbon to the New York suburbs and has to build a new life.
This crossover novel goes straight to the heart of the reader.
Zimler treats his characters with infinite
compassion and sensitivity, expertly showing the complexity of human nature.
Ípsilon
An
author whose work I follow with devotion.
Helena
Vasconcelos
Represented in all languages, except English, French and Spanish
Visit the author’s website:
Original editions and rights sold:
Novels:
The
Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Lisbon:
Quetzal 1996, 313 p.
Film rights
sold
Brazil:
Companhia das Letras 1998, Relume Dumará 2007, Record/BestBolso 2010 ● Bulgaria:
Pamet ● Croatia: Miob ● Czech Rep.: Argo 2005 ● France: Flammarion 1997 ● Germany: Rowohlt 1997; pb 1999 ● Greece: Livani 2001 ● Hungary: Sweetwater 2002 ● Israel: Penn 2002 ● Italy: Mondadori 1998 ● Japan: Jiritsu Shobo 2009 ● Lithuania: Pasvires Pasualis 2004 ● Netherlands: Bzztôh 1999, Sirene pb 2000, Karakter ● Norway: Kagge 2006, pb 2007 ● Poland: Zysk I S-ka 2003 ● Romania: Humanitas 2007● Russia: AST 2005 ● Serbia & Montenegro: Laguna 2004 ● Spain: Edhasa 1999 ● Turkey: Iletisim 2002 ● UK: Arcadia 1998, pb 2000 ● US: Overlook Press 1998
Unholy
Ghosts, Norfolk: GMP Publications 1996, 255 p.
Italy:
Playground
The
Angelic Darkness, Lisbon: Quetzal 1998, 195 p.
UK: Arcadia
2000 ● US: Norton 1999
Hunting
Midnight,
New York:
Bantam/Delacorte Press 2003, 499 p.
Czech
Republic: Argo 2007 ● Denmark: Forlaget Ørby ● France: Cherche Midi 2006 ● Italy: Cavallo di Ferro 2006 ● Poland: Zysk I S-ka 2005 ● Portugal: Gótica 2003 ● Russia: AST 2006 ● Serbia: Laguna 2007 ● Spain: Edhasa 2007 ● Turkey: Inkilap 2004 ● UK: Constable & Robinson 2004
Guardian
of the Dawn, New York: Bantam/Delacorte Press 2005, 371 p.
France:
Cherche Midi 2008 ● Poland: Zysk I S-ka 2006 ● Portugal: Gótica 2005 ● UK: Constable & Robinson 2005
The
Search for Sana, London: Constable
& Robinson 2005, 245 p.
Brazil:
Relume Dumará 2007 ● France: Cherche Midi 2009 ● Portugal: Gótica 2006 ● Sweden: Lusima Böcker 2008
The
Seventh Gate, London:
Constable & Robinson 2007, 577 p.
Brazil:
Record ● Netherlands: Karakter ● Portugal: ASA 2007 ● Sweden:
Lusima Böcker 2008 ● US:
Overlook Press
The
Warsaw Anagrams, London:
Constable & Robinson 2011, 323 p.
Brazil:
Record 2010 ● France: Buchet-Chastel ● Italy: Piemme 2012 ● Netherlands: Karakter ● Poland: Zysk I S-ka 2011 ● Portugal: Oceanos 2009 ● Serbia: IPS Media 2010 ● Spain:
Urano ● Turkey: Inkilap 2011 ● US:
Overlook Press 2011
Strawberry
Fields Forever, London: Arcadia 2012, 220 p.
Brazil: Record ● Portugal: Dom Quixote 2011
Stories:
Confundir
a Cidade com o Mar, Lisbon:
Ozenaos 2008, 212 p.
For children:
Dança
quando chegares ao fim, Lisbon: Caminho 2009, 36 p.
Illustration by
Bernardo Carvalho
Brazil:
Record