Misophonia - by Dana Vowinckel

Book Synopsis

In the vein of Fleishman is in Trouble and Elif Batuman--an insightful, heartfelt, and hilarious debut exploring cultural diaspora through one teenager's summer across Berlin, Jerusalem, and Chicago

It's another scorching summer in Chicago, and fifteen-year-old Margarita is spending her vacation as usual, under the not-so-watchful eyes of her aging maternal grandparents. All told, the plucky teen would much rather be at home in Germany, exploring Berlin with her best friend, Anna, or with Avi, her doting Israeli father, a cantor at their local synagogue with whom she has shared a special bond ever since her mother, Marsha, abandoned the family. Instead, she's stuck halfway around the world, homesick and tortured by the sound of her grandparents' chewing.

But when arrangements are made behind her back for her to meet Marsha in Israel before returning to Germany, Margarita is blindsided. She wants no part of this overdue reconciliation with a mother she hardly knows/ When her mother fails to show, however, things go awry. Meanwhile, in Germany, Avi tries to fill the hole left by Margarita's absence with a trip of his own, embarking on a personal journey, both hope-inducing and despairing.Expertly straddling the two narratives of daughter and father, Misophonia is a graceful exploration of imperfect family relationships and larger cultural displacement.

Translated from the German by Adrian Nathan West

Review Quotes

"Dana Vowinckel's remarkable debut . . . is a book about being Jewish and German, and all the awkwardness that entails . . . an extraordinary novel." - The Guardian
"Dana Vowinckel tells of the desires and drudgery of puberty, of everyday life and the conflicts of a religious single father and a liberal, intellectual woman, whose mode of being a mother doesn't fit any of the typical clichés. Narrated with both emotion and clarity, the novel draws its tension from the consistency of the narrative perspectives, allowing different world views to coexist even in the most intimate circles." - Jury of the Leipzig Book Fair Prize
"Dana Vowinckel's wonderful novel carried me along like a riptide. It introduced me to dimensions I know little about: the wild emotions of a fifteen-year-old and the inner dialogue of an observant Jew. The book is rich in contrasting ingredients: the tensions between parents and children or the absurd calculus of the pious and the secular living together. Vowinckel's debut rises above a merely anecdotal novel to the heights of the best of literature." - Eric Bogosian
"Dana Vowinckel's novel is of profound wisdom; it knows about faltering, about the yearning and the turmoil of traveling the world." - Julia Franck
"[This] sensitive coming-of-age novel reveals--without kitsch--the yearning to belong, while also addressing the fear of doing so. An enthralling debut." - Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Ambitious . . . [a] nuanced look into a Jewish family's divisions." - Publishers Weekly
"A com-ing-of-age nov-el that sen-si-tive-ly ren-ders com-plex fam-i-ly dynam-ics in an inter-est-ing cul-tur-al context." - The Jewish Book Council
"[With Misophonia, Vowinckel] has made German-language contemporary literature a more beautiful place, and I'm so grateful for her book and her immense talent."
- Christian Kracht, author of the International Booker-longlisted Eurotrash