The touches of magical realism reminded me of 100 Years of Solitude and read like a Forest Gump/Bi Spanning 1,000 years, The Elixir of Immortality weaves the Spinoza family saga through European and Jewish history. Focusing on one son per generation, we follow the path of the secret elixir of immortality as it’s passed from father to son. Acting as the frame story, Ari, the narrator, begins by explaining that he is childless, dying and wants to keep his family history from disappearing with him.
Spanning 1,000 years, The Elixir of Immortality weaves the Spinoza family saga through European and Jewish history. The Elixir of Immortality blends truth and fiction as it rewrites European history through comic, imaginative, scandalous, and tragic tales that prove “the only thing that can possibly give human beings immortality on this earth: our ability to remember.” He chronicles the Spinozas’ involvement in some of Europe’s most formative cultural events with intertwining narratives that move through ages of tyranny, creativity, and social upheaval: into medieval Portugal, Grand inquisitor Torquemada’s Spain, Rembrandt’s Amsterdam, the French Revolution, Freud’s Vienna, and the horrors of both world wars. From his deathbed, he begins his narrative, hoping to save his lineage from oblivion.Īri’s two main sources of his family’s history are a trunk of yellowing documents inherited from his grandfather, and his great-uncle Fernando’s tales that captivated him when he was a child. Now, after thirty-six generations, the last descendant of this long and illustrious chain, Ari Spinoza, doesn’t have a son to whom to entrust the manuscript.
From his deathbed, he begins his narrative, hoping to save his lineage fro Since the eleventh century, the Spinoza family has passed down, from father to son, a secret manuscript containing the recipe for immortality.
Since the eleventh century, the Spinoza family has passed down, from father to son, a secret manuscript containing the recipe for immortality.
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