Bram Presser

Cafe Scheherazade comes from the great Jewish storytelling tradition, where people talk over one another with unbridled exuberance to build a somewhat shambolic, but stunning and expansive, narrative edifice. And, in watching the great cacophony of its construction, we witness the transformation of grief and trauma into poetry. That Zable focuses on the tales of these particular survivors should come as little surprise. Cafe Scheherazade represents an early distillation of what would become his life’s project: giving voice to those who are silenced. It is the noble advocacy of a true artist, simple, tenacious and unadorned, deeply rooted in the power of storytelling itself.

Presser draws draw strands together—historical, cultural, geographical, familial—to create something living, to prevent past atrocities from crystallising and slipping into memory as isolated events that don’t continue to effect the present. The Book of Dirt is both a loving, honest portrayal of lives that would have been erased, and an incorporation of the broader lessons of their experience into contemporary mythology. It keeps the discussion about trauma, memory, and intergenerational acts of transfer alive for those generations that follow, that risk forgetting. It is a potent achievement for a debut novel.