Cafe Scheherazade

By Arnold Zable

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 187648571X
• ISBN13: 9781876485719
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: TEXT PUBLISHING COMPANY
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Cafe Scheherazade, A Tale of Love, Survival, and Family

Zable's book takes place in a milk bar/coffee lounge in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne AU. Rather, the people on whom the book is based are there - the story takes place in the present (when he interviewed the survivors-between 1990 and 2000, I think) and in the time of WWII. The stories these Jewish immigrants to Australia share are raw, a way of developing a new family, and "in your face" as Zable told our class - the survivors lost everything in the concentration camps except the will to live and rebuilt their lives in Melbourne. Their stories come to light (the stories were already alive) in Zable's book, as does the love that Masha and Avram share - they were the owners of Cafe S. when the book was written. The stories are gripping; it's a 5 hankie book in my estimation. While the book is a fictionalized account of what happened to these folks (characters are composites for example), the events are real. Zable is a wonderful story teller and feels we all have a story to tell, but in order to be story tellers, we have to be excellent listeners. He is an excellent listener. If you are interested in stories of human behavior, history, or the Holocaust, then this is a book well worth reading.