Green World

A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare

De: Michelle Ephraim

Narrado por: Sharon Freedman

At twenty-three, Michelle Ephraim was failing at everything. The only child of reclusive Holocaust-survivor parents who were dismayed by her literary studies, she found herself dumped by her boyfriend and bombing out of graduate school. Then, one night, she crashed a Shakespeare recitation party. Loopy from vodka and never having read a single line of Shakespeare, she was transfixed. Shakespeare, she decided, was the lifeline she needed.

Green World is the hilarious and heartbreaking story of Ephraim's quest to become a Shakespeare scholar and to find community and home. As she studies Shakespeare, Ephraim's world uncannily begins to mirror the story of the Jewish daughter in The Merchant of Venice, and she finds herself in a Green World, an idyllic place where Shakespeare's heroines escape their family trauma. Green World reckons with global, historical, and personal tragedy and shows how literature—comic and tragic—can help us brave every kind of anguish.

©2024 University of Massachusetts Press (P)2024 Tantor

Funny, honest, and moving

This is an engaging tale of a woman who discovers Shakespeare, and, through his works, discovers herself. Her taut, brisk text is brought to life in this enchanting presentation.