Songs My Mother Taught Me: A Novel by Eva Izsak

Songs My Mother Taught Me follows protagonist on her final voyage to see her dying mother, who is hissing and kicking all the way to the grave. Having spent decades trying to escape her heritage by constantly moving around the globe—Tokyo, New York, then Paris—the narrator finds herself back in the house she grew up in. She is confronted with the epigenetical endowment inherited from her parents’ experiences and has to come to peace with the looming shadows of the past.

An epic and lyrical tale that spans from Transylvania in the 1930s through Scarsdale, NY to present-day Europe, Songs My Mother Taught Me touches upon questions of identity, immigration, and PTSD transmitted down the generations—giving voice to those who grew up in the aftermath of their parents’ trauma.