City of Laughter

An ambitious, delirious novel that tangles with queerness, spirituality, and generational silence, City of Laughter announces Temim Fruchter as a fresh and assured new literary voice. '[A] brainy and richly textured debut . . . In this book, a new generation accepts the complicated lacunae of history; what they can't abide is silence and obstruction' NEW YORK TIMES'Funny, beautifully crafted, rich with insight, and wildly gripping' Andrea Lawlor, author of PAUL TAKES THE FORM OF A MORTAL GIRL 'A sharply observed, tenderly complex, and wildly delightful debut by an original and impressive new voice' Danielle Evans, author of THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS'Has the sparkle and fire of something truly rare . . . chock full of wit and tenderness and an incredible amount of heart. One of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking books I've ever read' Kristen Arnett, author of WITH TEETH'A rich, lyrical portrait of four generations of unruly longings, a multigenerational tale of seeking, of laughter, of the sacred hiding in plain sight. Every line is haunted by loving ghosts' Zeyn Joukhadar, author of THE THIRTY NAMES OF NIGHT'A bountiful, curious, huge-hearted celebration of desire and memory, illuminating the eternal, indestructible nature of queer inheritance' Elisa Albert, author of HUMAN BLUES'A thrilling journey that endlessly finds new ways to surprise and delight, challenge, and enthral. Very few debut novels are as ambitious as this; even fewer deliver on even their biggest promises so assuredly' Matt Bell, author of APPLESEED A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years.City of Laughter follows a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets back to her family's origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire.Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th-century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger - bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century.In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother, Mira, about whom no one speaks.What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present. Electric and sharply intimate, City of Laughter zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind.