Home › Books › One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search…
One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World
by
80/99
Critics' Rating Index
85/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
66/99
Volume of Reviews
82/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
One of Wall Street Journal 's Ten Best Books of the Year * Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards for Holocaust Memoir and Sephardic Culture * Recipient of the Jewish Book Council's Natan Notable Book Award * Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal The remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the author over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale. With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood on the Greek island of Rhodes where she'd grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium. Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays over the course of six years that they would spend in each other's company. During these meetings Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians conquered in 1912, began governing as an official colonial possession in 1923, and continued to administer even after the Germans seized control in September 1943. The following July, the Germans rounded up all 1,700-plus residents of the Juderia and sent them first by boat and then by train to Auschwitz on what was the longest journey—measured by both time and distance—of any of the deportations. Ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival. Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place has vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, as well as an account of a tender and transformative friendship between storyteller and listener, offering a powerful "reminder that the ability to listen thoughtfully is a rare and significant gift" ( The Wall Street Journal).
Reviews
"It is a deeply affecting addition to the literature of the Holocaust."
"Frank revisits the life of nonagenarian and Holocaust survivor Stella Levi in his incandescent latest...The two struck up a friendship after meeting in New York City in 2015, and, over six years, Frank writes that Levi became to him 'a time traveler who would invite me to travel with her'...Even with its sobering revelations, Frank's narrative shines with an ebullience, thanks to the 'unusually rich, textured, and evolving' life of his utterly enchanting muse...The result provides an essential, humanist look into a dark chapter of 20th-century history."
"Illustrations by Kalman also bring this world to life ..."
"Over the course of six years, she and the author built an unlikely friendship as Stella shared her most beloved and horrific memories, from her idyllic childhood with her grandmothers to her adolescent friendships and adventures on the island to her most traumatic experiences of deportation and surviving the war...Accompanied by illustrations from Maira Kalman, Frank writes Stella's harrowing journey with care, and the result is this beautifully crafted true story of friendship, love, survival, and redemption."
"At 99, a Holocaust survivor describes her harrowing experience...The narrative, interspersed with Kalman's color paintings of scenes from Levi's life, is an evocative and heartbreaking work...Readers only intermittently get a sense of the connection between Levi and Frank, and based on the evidence presented here, it doesn't transcend far beyond that of reporter and subject...The story Levi tells, however, is gut-wrenching in its horrifying familiarity, and Frank presents it well—even if the concept of 100 Saturdays comes across as a storytelling gimmick...A brutal yet ultimately hopeful account from one of history's darkest episodes."
"Fiercely independent, keenly intelligent and remorselessly honest, Levi refuses to be defined solely by the tragedy of her youth."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!