Taking up the mantle of a generation that cannot abide in silence and obstruction, Temim Fruchter unveils their rich and intricately wrought debut, A City of Laughter, a sprawling multi-generational family saga.

An 18th-century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger – bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz, Poland desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century.

In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother, Mira, about whom no one speaks.

What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present.

As a queer, nonbinary writer raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish household, Temim will delve into themes of hidden lives, the complexities of mother-daughter bonds, and the mysterious forces that shape our paths. They will pose thoughtful questions: What does it mean to return to a place from which one is partially descended? And what if the answers you seek remain elusive?

Electric and sharply intimate, Temim will zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind.

“Funny, beautifully crafted, rich with insight, and wildly gripping. The queer Jewish femme multi-generational family saga I didn't know I needed!” Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl