ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question:  Where do the five novels in Richard Zimler’s Sephardic Cycle take place?

Richard Zimler is a best-selling novelist who specializes in historical fiction, generally with Jewish themes.  He was born in New York in 1956. He earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative religion from Duke University and a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford University, and then worked for eight years as a journalist, mainly in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1990, he moved to Porto, Portugal, where he taught journalism for sixteen years.

Richard has published a dozen novels over the last 26 years, and his works have been translated into over 20 languages. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists in 12 different countries, and he has won numerous awards for his work. Five of his books have been nominated for the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award and he was also granted a 1994 U.S. National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. In 2017, the city of Porto awarded Zimler its highest distinction, the Medal of Honor.

Richard has also published several children’s books in Portugal. One of them, “The Dog Who Ate Raindrops” won the prize for Best Children’s Book of 2018 from the Bissaya Barreto Foundation of Portugal. He writes his children’s books in Portuguese and his novels in English.

Richard’s new novel, The Incandescent Threads, is the latest book in his Sephardic Cycle.  It was published in the UK this past July, and will be published in the United States and Canada next month, in November.  It’s a fascinating book that you can’t put down, and to whet your appetite, I suggest you take a look at this short video, in which the author speaks about the curious story behind its cover. This week we are speaking with him about the book, the Sephardic Cycle, and his creative process.