"Stylish and inventive...Levi...writes with a Saul Bellow-like braininess and brashness while also bearing the mark of such fabulists as Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez...delightfully readable...vigorous, vivid, and grounded in the pleasures of the senses."

"Seriously funny, beguilingly ambitious...calls to mind the fanciful storytelling flights of Cynthia Ozick and John Barth, the outrageous satire of Monty Python, and the globetrotting of Vanity Fair...a fabulously complicated tale of travel, exile and renewal."

"A fable of fantastical lushness, reminiscent of the best fairy tales."

"Brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed, this extraordinary first novel uses magic realism and travelers' tales to achieve a startlingly unique revisionist history of the discovery of America. Like a Chagall painting, Levi's novel weaves together Jewish folk tales, dreams, violins, flamenco, and even Led Zeppelin into a rich, constantly evolving tapestry. Two women--Holland, a documentary filmmaker, and Hanni, who is searching for an ancient family letter--are stranded overnight in Spain. Holland and Hanni find a connection in the same mysterious travel agent, Ben, and in young Isabella, who might be Holland's daughter and Hanni's granddaughter. As Hanni's successfully located letter is read aloud, it reveals the history of the Jewish people, ending with their expulsion from Spain and the discovery of America by Esau, Hanni's ancestor. It may all be a grand cosmic joke engineered by Ben, but Levi, a cofounder of Granta, has accomplished a stunning tour de force that shouldn't be missed."

"Levi's audacious debut rings changes on a variety of intellectual themes while chronicling the friendship of two women, both visitors in Spain, who discover their common bonds."