Tag Archives: Portugal

The Monday Book: THE LAST KABBALIST by Richard Zimler

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The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon is a BIG book. (I like big….. yes, okay.) It came into our shop years ago and I took it upstairs to read, and became engrossed. Read it in three nights. Then I put it back in the shop, and when I started writing the Monday Book blog, I couldn’t remember the name!

Just yesterday another copy came into the shop, and I recognized it instantly, grabbed it, and wrote this for y’all.

This is a GOOD read if you like historic epics intertwined with realistic characters. Richard Zimler’s story takes place soon after Lisbon’s 1506 massacre of “New Christians,” when the powder keg of Muslim, Christian, Jewish interaction ignited. For those unfamiliar, in the late 1400s a lot of Jews were living in Portugal, which had proved the most tolerant of the countries available to them. But in 1497(ish) Jews were hauled en masse to Christian baptism fonts and pretty much converted against their will to Christianity.

That should have kept them safe, but the world being what it is, it didn’t. Zimler’s epic picks up at the point where rumblings have started again.

The Last Kabbalist is a fascinating depiction of the interaction between not only these BIG categories of religions, but the smaller divisions and hidden links between them. Subsets of Jews and Muslims and Christians act independently within their religions, following the threads of their own lives: desire for knowledge, compassion, anger, vengeance.

And human hearts are never simple anyway. Berekiah is a young illuminator (an illustrator) who finds his uncle murdered– his uncle who apprenticed him and is the sole of religious dignity, dead with a naked girl beside him. So there’s a mystery, but also Berekiah needs to survive the riots, he’s in love with a girl, and he’s kinda trying to hold his family together.

At times awful in its depictions of violence, always insightful into how people have helped and harmed each other since history was recorded, Kabbalist is a gripping read. You felt like you could see, smell, taste, and feel the terror, hope, and desperate planning of those trying to survive.

A word of warning: don’t start Kabbalist unless you have time to read for awhile. You’re not going to put it down easily.

Look What They’re Doing in Portugal!

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On Saturday Jack and I got a message from a bookseller in Portugal:

Dear Wendy Welch and dear Jack Beck,
My name is Inês and I’m from Portugal. I stumbled upon your book 2 days ago and I’m already in love with your little bookshop. I’m in the middle of the book and already I have cried and laughed, and had goose bumps… it’s so nice to see that you are doing so well in there! I’m so proud of you and I haven’t met you (yet!!!… ’cause I’m telling you, one day I’ll visit you! I need to see you with my own eyes! hahaha)
I too work at a little bookshop at a little town called Sines, I don’t own the bookshop, but my boss is a dear friend of mine. I’m always trying to come up with ideias to bring new customers here…
Read Wendy’s words has given me strenght and hope! We can do this! And I’m writing this simple message (with my bad english) just to thank you guys, for inspiring people, there, and obviously, like me… all around the world where the book has been sold.
Best wishes and a warm hug, Inês Espada

So of course now we’re in love with Ines, and in short order her boss; another bookseller named Luis, an activist from another town; the bookshop she works in; and her mom became Facebook friends of Jack and me and had liked our store (as we did theirs). But the cool thing, aside from just being happy to meet booksellers from another country, is to find that in Portugal indie bookstores have banded together in ways that really create a supportive community between them. Here’s some additional info Ines sent Sunday:

Luis is a dear friend of mine! he’s a book seller, and a great fighter of our cause. He’s always sharing information about bookstores and he created an event every year at the last sunday of march we have a booksellers meeting where we can discuss all the things that are happening around our book world. And now we have created a diploma to honor the great booksellers we have. With the big online shops selling books, it’s been difficult to us to combat the low prices that they have… It has been a struggle for some little bookstores, many have closed… but we have our motto, something like this: “Isto não fica assim!” The translation must be something like “we can do it” or “this will not end here!”

  • ISTO NÃO FICA ASSIM!

    encontrolivreiro.blogspot.com

    I was looking at our blog, the blog we use for the anual meeting, and I really want to show you, but it’s all in portuguese, you can try to read some of the things using google translate, but I’m gonna propose we do an english version. the diploma is called “Livreiros da Esperança” – Booksellers of Hope for booksellers that never stopped believing in books! Just like you! this year the diploma goes to a couple that have a bookstore at Setúbal for more than 40 years. You can see them in the photos at the blog http://encontrolivreiro.blogspot.pt/