Who Is Martha? [Paperback]

Hilarious, beautiful and compassionate ... exquisitely rendered. —World Literature Today

“A sweet, sad, sunny meditation on birds and music and the gentle approach of death.”
— John Rockwell, formerNew York Timesarts critic and editor and founding director of Lincoln Center Festival

A deeply compassionate meditation on one man’s life and its impending finality. Amusingly digressive and philosophically rich ... Gaponenko, at just thirty-four, remains a serious young talent and someone to keep an eye out for in the coming years. —Rain Taxi

A book like a fantastic party, as unshakeable as a child's faith. . . . Astonishes to the very end. —Neue Zürcher Zeitung

With layers of inventive language, vividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom, this is a brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torte. —Sy Montgomery, author ofBirdology

A celebration of creation and all its wonders, full of the joy of life. —Der Spiegel

A work of unbridled imagination. Marjana Gaponenko is exuberantly talented, and here she pulls out all the stops. —Die Welt

A panorama of twentieth century Central European history. —Citation for the 2013 Adelbert von Chamisso Prize

In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha – the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons – died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doeslăĹ