Poet and scholar Esther Schor will discuss her book Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language (Metropolitan $32) at 6 p.m. on Thursday, November 17 at Labyrinth Books.

According to Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree, “Esther Schor’s lovely book describes how a tenacious group of people have dedicated themselves to an optimistic vision of harmony. It is a meditation not only on Esperanto, but on idealism itself, and it is written with resonant clarity, abiding kindness, and great compassion.”

Says Jonathan Rosen, author of Joy Comes in the Morning: “Esther Schor has crossed continents, tunneled under the Tower of Babel, brooded over the 20th century’s darkest traumas and brightest dreams, and spoken endless Esperanto in an effort to understand how a language freighted with human tragedy still lives like a kiss on the lips of its speakers. This is a beautiful, mysteriously moving book by a fearless writer who set out to find the soul of a language, knowing full well that it was her own soul she was after all along.”

Esther Schor is the author of Emma Lazarus, which received a 2006 National Jewish Book Award, and the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Forward, among other publications. Her first collection of poems, The Hills of Holland, was a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards. She is professor of English at Princeton University.

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