ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Why did Jack Michonik choose to set his novel The Heritage in an imaginary city and country in Latin America, rather than in a real one?
Jack Michonik was born in Geneva, Switzerland of Russian parents, and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. He attended high school in New York and graduated in Business Administration from the University of Grenoble, France. He then lived in Cali, Colombia for 20 years before permanently settling in Tel Aviv with his wife and two children. Mr. Michonik began to write in Colombia and published his first novel, El Dorado, in 1977. Since then he has written several novels, the most recent of which is La descendencia, published in English as The Heritage. It tells the story of Jews from Eastern Europe who settled in Latin America at the beginning of the 20th century, and how their community developed through the 1960s.
Mr. Michonik spoke with us about the book and the Jewish communities in Latin America.
