A hilarious and heartbreaking story of one young woman’s quest to become a Shakespeare scholar and to find community and home.
About the Book
At twenty-three, Michelle Ephraim was failing at everything. The only child of reclusive Holocaust-survivor parents who were dismayed by her literary studies, she found herself dumped by her boyfriend and bombing out of graduate school. Then, one night, she crashed a Shakespeare recitation party. Loopy from vodka and never having read a single line of Shakespeare, she was transfixed. Shakespeare, she decided, was the lifeline she needed.
About the Author
Michelle Ephraim is a Shakespeare professor, author, and public speaker. Her books include GREEN WORLD: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage, and Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas. Michelle and fellow Shakespearean Caroline Bicks co-host the award-winning podcast Everyday Shakespeare, which explores the uncanny (and often hilarious) ways that Shakespeare sheds light on our modern problems.
Praise for Michelle's Books
Captivating
“Green World is one of the funniest and most captivating memoirs I’ve read in years. Ephraim’s wit flies off the page.”
—Chris Monks, managing editor, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
a love story unlike any other
“Green World is a love story unlike any other, and not just because one of the principals died four hundred years ago. Michelle Ephraim's poignant memoir of discovering Shakespeare—and herself—is also an unsparing family portrait and a profound meditation on loss. To read it is to remember why you fell for books in the first place."
—Andrew Ridker, author of
The Altruists and Hope, a New Yorker Best Book of 2023
lively, well-written and deeply human
“Michelle Ephraim has delighted audiences on The Moth stage, and you will find her wit, compassion for those around her, and deep self-awareness on every page of Green World. She expertly weaves complex Shakespearean characters and plots into tales of the highly relatable highs and lows of her own life. It is a lively, well-written and deeply human book."
—Catherine Burns, artistic director,
The Moth
[A] compulsively readable memoir
“In Green World Ephraim deftly braids together her own life, the lives of her parents, both Holocaust survivors, and her reading of Shakespeare. I love how she uses The Merchant of Venice to illuminate complicated questions of anti-Semitism and familial loyalty. And I love the wit and warmth with which she writes about her journey in academia. This is a compulsively readable memoir."
—Margot Livesey, author of
The Road from Belhaven
Breathtaking
“In a culture where artificial intelligence is ever-encroaching, Green World reaffirms our love of reading, enforcing how vastly literature can transform us. It changed Michelle Ephraim, and the joy and urgency of that discovery, shown through her own life, is breathtaking.”
—Jennifer Gilmore, author of
The Mothers and We Were Never Here
Green World, is a ship that stops at many ports
“Michelle Ephraim's candid and beautifully modulated memoir, Green World, is a ship that stops at many ports, each one as inviting and rewarding... Green World is a lovely book that bursts with joy as well as sorrow, while offering a deep understanding of what it means to be human. I couldn't put it down."
—Jonathan Wilson, author of The Red Balcony and A Palestine Affair, finalist for the National Jewish Book Award
Everyday Shakespeare Podcast
Hosts Michelle Epraim and Caroline Bicks are Shakespeare professors and close friends who love to bond over the ways Shakespeare’s plays help them through their everyday dramas.
Also by Michelle
Trailer
Watch the trailer for Green World
Latest Blog Post
As if a new Taylor Swift album isn’t thrilling enough, The Life of a Showgirl adds yet another Shakespearean female character to the T-Swift oeuvre with the song “The Fate of Ophelia” (joining Juliet from “Love Story”). Full disclosure: I’m obsessed with Shakespeare in popular culture, and I hope that this blog will be your…
Read More