JANE SAGINAW

“Jane Saginaw’s Because the World Is Round is a moving, hilarious, and beautifully written memoir of the author’s teenage adventure with her family, which takes her to some of the most fascinating places on earth—Lisbon, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Yugoslavia, London—in the year 1970, a time of great political and social upheaval. Along the way, the young protagonist meets Golda Meir, smokes hash for the first time in Kabul, escapes a harrowing encounter with angry villagers in the Indian countryside, and has a coming-of-age epiphany at the London production of Hair. Even more than an adventure tale, though, Because the World Is Round is the story of the relationship between a brilliant, dominant mother who is physically disabled and her caretaker daughter, and the way that relationship changes and grows—sometimes painfully, sometimes joyously—as the daughter begins waking up to the world and a sense of her own identity, femininity, and power. With empathy and wit, in sharply observed prose, Saginaw gives insight into families, mothers, and daughters that is both deeply particular to her life and imbued with universal truths. Because the World Is Round is a book full of wisdom and delight.”

—Peter Kline, author of Mirrorforms and Deviants