Kingdom of the Young — Edie Meidav

“A series of dreamy, complex, poignant stories with language that is by turns gauzy-poetic and pinpoint-precise but unfailingly inventive.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
 
The dynamic characters in Kingdom of the Young are searching: for adventure, work, love, absolution, better chances elsewhere. A fanatical child army loses faith in its commander as he ages unforgivably into his thirties. A woman possessed with wanderlust and a small inheritance seeks love among the cave-dwelling Roma in Granada. Traumatized war veterans run local rackets; smarmy bureaucrats rise through the ranks of repressive regimes; civilians attempt to escape the stranglehold of life under dictatorships.
 
From the honeycombed caves outside the Alhambra to the streets of Havana, from hospital wards to quinceañera parties, these stories -- along with the collection's illuminating nonfiction coda -- testify to the vast imaginative range of an author who has won a Kafka and a Whiting Award among other literary prizes.
 
“Ambitious, original, deliciously philosophical. Kingdom of the Young invites comparison to the crônicas of Clarice Lispector and the fabulas of Italo Calvino.” -- Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution