Who Is Martha?

By: Marjana Gaponenko

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Synopsis: &“Vividly drawn characters, history, music, birds, love, loneliness, and wisdom . . . A brilliant book, rich and satisfying as a Viennese torte&” (Sy Montgomery, author of Birdology). In this poignant yet rollicking novel, ninety-six-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski forgoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski too has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesn&’t have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days. This gloriously written tale is &“a book like a fantastic party, as unshakeable as a child&’s faith [that] astonishes to the very end&” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung).