Sarah Siegel

I picked this book because of the intriguing title, and because my wife and I are Jewish and had lived in India for six months (though in 2007, not 1985) and because I mistook the author for her daughter. Just before our time in India, I had read Kiran Desai's *An Inheritance of Loss* and loved it. I realized my mistake about the authoer after I started *Baumgartner's Bombay*, but kept going because it was so good. Whenever I'm in grief, e.g., when my mom (z"l) died in 2014 or during Covid-19's menacing presence at large, I have a harder time focusing on reading fiction (or anything), but I was able to lose myself in this book. How unusual to read a book about a Berliner, escaping the Nazis by going to India, and then the author's language was so vivid, immersing. After finishing the book just now, I found out that it was Kiran Desai's mom who wrote it! No wonder. The main character was as vivid as any in early-Yiddish literature, yet it was written by an Indian woman in the '80s, not a European, Jewish man in the late 19th-century/early-20th century. It was a privilege to read this book!