No one can be closer to another than a mother to her unborn child. No one, that is, except unborn twins jostling for space in the womb. In this concise and inventive novel, a twin brother and sister vie for attention from the reader much as they competed for room before their birth. Their prenatal intimacy and jealousy interlace until they can hardly recognize who is who. The chaos originating at the very moment of the twins' conception gains dramatic proportions when they enter the world male and female. From the moment of their births, everything changes. The lives of the family members...

Born in Buenos Aires in 1951, Ana Maria Shua is one of the most exciting and prolific young Latin American Jewish writers. She published her first book at the age of sixteen; since then she has published thirteen books, including nonfiction, novels, short stories, and children's books. The Book of Memories, originally published in Spanish in 1994, is a humorous yet moving exploration of a Jewish family's history, as seen through the eyes of three generations of women. The story begins with Grandfather Gedalia leaving Poland with forged papers to escape the army and sailing to Argentina, the...

These two autobiographical novels lay bare the life journey of a Mexican Jewish woman reconciling herself with a Sephardic background, her parent's dictates, and her husband's and family's expectations. The only constant in her life is a need to find her own way, and the story of how she does so is intensely personal and yet universal in its humanness. This quest begins in Oshinica's childhood: at about age ten she's taken from the public school in Mexico City and placed in a Jewish one. There she begins to understand what it means to be Jewish. Though somewhat indifferent to Hebrew lessons,...