Susan Daitch – författare

One of the most sensational incidents in the history of France, the Dreyfus Affair was a landmark federal case involving treason and antisemitism. A controversial documentary about the trial by pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès caused riots when it was shown in 1899, and was banned from any screening in France for the next three quarters of a century.

Who engineered Dreyfus''s conviction? Was the man who played him in the film actually murdered by a mob of enraged moviegoers? And why is Jack Kews, a shadowy 20th-century Zola in New York City, so determined to find out?

A web of intrigue, menace and betrayal reaches through space and time, as the search for keys to a historic trap hones in on a cache of zealously guarded forgeries and tins of crumbling film stock.

"This erudite page-turner takes us from late 19th-century France to the film studios of the great Georges Méliès to the tribulations of a film restorer who finds herself caught up in political intrigue, a century after the famous Affaire Dreyfus. As in her celebrated L. C., Daitch constructs a compelling dialogue with an earlier century that shifts our perspective on our own time."—Susan Bernofsky, Foreign Words

"It''s Susan Daitch at her finest! A smart, absorbing study of those at the margins of history who, under her deft pen, turn out to be vital. Fascinating story, captivating writing."—Deb Olin unferth, Revolution: The Year I Fell In Love and Went to Join the War

" . . . Daitch manages to reveal her characters in a light that makes us wonder if we are seeing them as they are or as another shadowy transparency. While the book is extensive in scope, the writing is sharp and lean."—The Black Sheep Dances

"Daitch has lost none of the bristling intelligence that makes her work so uniquely literary. . . . Daitch''s narrative can certainly be enjoyed as cerebral noir; the cryptic calls and notes delivered to Frances are reminiscent of Paul Auster."—The Review of Contemporary Fiction

"The world Susan Daitch spins is like uncovering a lost history first-hand through the eyes and ears of those who were there. An engrossing novel for the age of censorship and redaction."—Tottenville Review

"Enthusiastically recommended to fans of highbrow, erudite historical fiction. Readers who enjoy the novels of Umberto Eco, for example, will probably also enjoy those of Ms. Daitch."—New York Journal of Books

"Questions of integrity, authenticity and the slipperiness of ''truth'' in a politicized society animate Susan Daitch''s ambitious and highly satisfying novel about France''s infamous Dreyfus Affair and its legacy."—Shelf Awareness

Susan Daitch is the author of four novels—The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir (City Lights), Paper Conspiracies (City Lights), L. C. (Lannan Foundation Selection and NEA Heritage Award), The Colorist—and a collection of short stories, Storytown. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications such as The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction and The Brooklyn Rail. Her work was featured in The Review of Contemporary Fiction along with William Vollman and David Foster Wallace. She taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Iowa Writers'' Workshop. She currently teaches at Hunter College.

"With shades of Umberto Eco and Paul Auster, this brilliant, addictive adventure novel is about the search for a mythical lost city located somewhere in modern-day Iran. As a succession of explorers and shady characters dig deeper into the landscape, the ancient secret of Suolucidir is gradually revealed. This is brainy, escapist fiction at its best."--Publishers Weekly, Starred & Boxed Review

"The author''s prose is rich with winking allusions and sendups of modern tomb-raiding tropes, down to an explorer with ''a long stiff braid down her back.''"--The New Yorker

" . . . cerebral, satirical, and entertaining archaeological thriller . . . this richly crafted and handsomely written novel rewards rereading."--David Cooper, New York Journal of Books

"It''s always a delight to discover a voice as original as Susan Daitch''s."--Salman Rushdie

"One of the most intelligent and attentive writers at work in the US today."--David Foster Wallace

Indiana Jones meets Italo Calvino in a masterful, absurdist blend of biting social satire, rollicking adventure, invented history and mythology.

A series of archeological expeditions unfolds through time, each one looking for the ruins of a fabled underground city-state that once flourished in a remote province near the border of present-day Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sealed off for centuries by seismic activity, Suolucidir beckons with the promise of plunder and the glory of discovery, fantasies as varied as the imaginations of her aspiring modern-day conquerors.

As the tumult of the twentieth century''s great wars, imperial land grabs and anti-colonial revolutions swirl across its barren, deserted landscape, the ancient city remains entombed below the surface of the earth. A succession of adventurers, speculators and unsavory characters arrive in search of their prize, be it archeological treasure, oil, or evidence of crimes and punishments. Intrigue, conspiracies, and counter-plots abound, and contemporary events interfere with each expedition, whether in the form of the Axis advance, British Petroleum, or the Revolutionary Guards. People disappear, relics are stolen, and the city closes in upon itself once more.

A satiric, post-colonial adventure story of mythic proportions, The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir takes place against a background of actual events, in a part of the world with a particular historical relationship to Russia and the West. But though we are treated to visual "evidence" of its actual existence, Suolucidir remains a mystery, perhaps an invention of those who seek it, a place where history and identity are subject to revision, and the boundaries between East and West are anything but solid, reliable, or predictable.

Praise for The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir:

"Susan Daitch has written a literary barnburner of epic proportions. The question buried at the core of The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir is one of empirical--or is the imperial?--knowledge itself. Her labyrinthine tale of archeological derring-do calls to mind both 1984 and 2666, and does so by looking backward in time as well as forward. It is also utterly original, the work of a visionary writer with an artistic sensibility all her own."--Andrew Ervin, author of Burning Down George Orwell''s House

"This is a novel of archeology and history, of mythology and empire, powered by an undeniable call to adventure and a deep yearning for understanding, written by a novelist who manages to surprise on nearly every page."--Matt Bell, author of Scrapper

"Daitch''s latest is a beguiling and virtuoso companion to our inevitable end: a novel that wrenches, sentence by fine sentence, some order from the chaos, while never shortchanging the chaos itself."--Mark Doten, author of The Infernal

"Daitch''s novel is Indiana Jones for the introspective crowd--a continual, thrilling, and harrowing search for historical treasures."--Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews

In the first piece, an American forensic sculptor, reconstructing the faces of three victims receives a midnight, visit from a man who threatens her life unless she alters the faces she’s almost completed. The twists and turns of the mystery lead her to a new life, working with forensic archeologists at a site near the Prater amusement park in Vienna.

In the second section, an accent coach discovers that the man implicated in the death of his girlfriend in 1970s Buenos Aires was once a censor and Assistant Minister of Propaganda in Vienna during World War II. When bodies start turning up under the former Propaganda offices, some date from the war period—but others are much older, their origins going back to the Ottoman siege of Vienna.

In the final arc, in the aftermath of the last battle between the Austrians and the Turks, a local businesswoman finds three displaced women from Istanbul—former wives of the sultan—wandering in Vienna and gives them shelter in her brothel, located on the site of the future Ministry of Propaganda.

Connected across time by intersecting crimes and themes of language, cultural assimilation, and nationalist conflicts, Siege of Comedians, part political thriller, part comic noir, reflects on aspects of the current refugee crisis, human trafficking, and identity.