New book: The Converso’s Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture by Dalia Kandiyoti

The Converso’s Return

August 2020
336 pages.
from $26.00

Five centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos’ descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso’s Return explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past.

Ebook ISBN: 9781503612440
Paperback ISBN: 9781503612433
Hardcover ISBN: 9781503612297