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The Vision of Emma Blau

From the acclaimed author of Stones from the River comes a luminous epic of a bicultural family filled with passion and aspirations, tragedy and redemption.

At the heart of this multigenerational novel is an intriguing question: If you knew that you could experience a significant love once in your life, would you want these years at the beginning or at the end?

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Stefan Blau flees Burgdorf, a small town in Germany, and comes to America in search of the vision that has grafted itself to his mind so tenaciously that he's dreamed of it every single night. The novel closes nearly a century later with Stefan's granddaughter, Emma, and the legacy of his dream, a once-grand apartment house filled with the hidden truths of its inhabitants both past and present. Ursula Hegi creates a fascinating picture of immigrants in America: their dreams and disappointments, the challenges of assimilation, the frailty of language and its transcendence, the love that bonds generations and the cultural wedges that drive them irrevocably apart.

With her celebrated prose and clear-eyed characterisation, Ursula Hegi revisits the realm that earned her such a wide readership and critical acclaim with Stones from the River.