The House in Smyrna

From one of Granta's Best Young Brazilian Novelists comes a startling and powerful story about returning to one's origins in order to move forward. In Rio de Janeiro, a woman suffering from a mysterious illness, which is eroding her body and mind, decides to accept a challenge from her grandfather: to take the key to the house where he grew up - in the Turkish city of Smyrna - and open the door. As she embarks on this pilgrimage, she begins to write of her progress.<br><br>The writing soon becomes an exploration of her family's legacy of displacement in Europe, told in several narrative strands. Sifting through family stories - her grandfather's migration from Turkey to Brazil, her parents' exile in Portugal under the Brazilian military dictatorship, her mother's death, and her own love affair with a violent man - she traces her family's history in a journey to make sense of the past and to understand her place in it. With an epic sweep of time and place - traversing Brazil, Turkey, and Portugal - this is a profoundly moving portrait of a young woman finding her way back into life.<br><br>Spare, heartfelt, and evocative, The House in Smyrna is an unforgettable story from one of the most accomplished and original new voices in Brazil.