In Search of a Lost Ladino

This poignant and richly textured memoir was originally written in Judeo-Spanish, the language of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire and of Marcel Cohen's own childhood; it was later translated by the author himself into French. The book (which appears in this edition both in English and the Ladino original) is, writes Cohen, "more or less what my mind retains of the five centuries that my ancestors spent in Turkey." A haunting journey into personal and collective memory, it is also a meditation on a dying language and in fact a dying way of life—that of the Sephardic Jews of Salonica, Istanbul, and other points east. In Search of a Lost Ladino includes a thoughtful introductory essay, "Three Degrees of Exile," by translator Raphael Rubinstein, as well as a series of ink drawings by the well-known Spanish painter to whom Cohen addresses his letter.