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Author Edith Scott Saavedra Speaks on The Lamps of Albarracin

Thursday, May 9, 2019 4 Iyar 5779

7:00 PM - 9:00 PMSocial Hall

“From 15th Century Aragon, a Jewish girl sends us a message filled with light.” Sfarad.es.

The new Sephardic-interest historical novel The Lamps of Albarracín (Ventura: Floricanto Press, 2019) takes us back to medieval Spain to experience the multicultural society of southern Aragon — which achieved a level of convivencia or co-existence of faiths unmatched in Europe — and its extraordinary resistance to the Spanish Inquisition. Zaragoza in Aragon is probably not on your radar screen of Sephardic-heritage cities in Spain — yet its main synagogue used to have one of the largest congregations in all of Europe, at a time when the city controlled much of Mediterranean trade. This chapter in history about the greatest uprising against the Inquisition in Iberia has been suppressed in Spain for centuries, following a “scorched earth” response by the Catholic Monarchs. This novel, which takes a historical/spiritual approach replete with references to the Talmud and Zohar, is a bestseller on Amazon Spain alongside titles by Philip Roth and Isabel Allende. The Barcelona League against Racism and Antisemitism hails it as “the great publishing surprise of 2018.”

Edith Scott Saavedra earned a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and a juris doctor cum laude from the Harvard Law School. She has had a distinguished career as an international lawyer, business consultant, and author. From 1996 to 2018, she lived and worked in Hong Kong and Singapore. Ms. Scott is the co-author of several leading works on the competitiveness of industries, regions, and nations. The Lamps of Albarracin/Los Candiles de Albarracín is her first novel.

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