In the vein of Fleish­man is in Trou­ble and Elif Batu­man — an insight­ful, heart­felt, and hilar­i­ous debut explor­ing cul­tur­al dias­po­ra through one teenager’s sum­mer across Berlin, Jerusalem, and Chicago.

It’s anoth­er scorch­ing sum­mer in Chica­go, and fif­teen-year-old Mar­gari­ta is spend­ing her vaca­tion as usu­al, under the not-so-watch­ful eyes of her aging mater­nal grand­par­ents. All told, the plucky teen would much rather be at home in Ger­many, explor­ing Berlin with her best friend, Anna, or with Avi, her dot­ing Israeli father, a can­tor at their local syn­a­gogue with whom she has shared a spe­cial bond ever since her moth­er, Mar­sha, aban­doned the fam­i­ly. Instead, she’s stuck halfway around the world, home­sick and tor­tured by the sound of her grand­par­ents’ chewing. 

But when arrange­ments are made behind her back for her to meet Mar­sha in Israel before return­ing to Ger­many, Mar­gari­ta is blind­sided. She wants no part of this over­due rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with a moth­er she hard­ly knows/​When her moth­er fails to show, how­ev­er, things go awry. Mean­while, in Ger­many, Avi tries to fill the hole left by Margarita’s absence with a trip of his own, embark­ing on a per­son­al jour­ney, both hope-induc­ing and despairing.Expertly strad­dling the two nar­ra­tives of daugh­ter and father, Miso­pho­nia is a grace­ful explo­ration of imper­fect fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships and larg­er cul­tur­al displacement.

Trans­lat­ed from the Ger­man by Adri­an Nathan West