“[A] moving and heartbreaking immigrant account that began with a relatively abundant life in Zagradowka, a village in the Ukrainian province of Kherson. … I urge readers to discover for themselves this unassuming masterpiece.” — Irena Karshenbaum, Jewish Post & News“Marcos Iolovitch’s On a Clear April Morning is an autobiography—first published in Portuguese in 1940 with a second edition in 1987, and now introduced to English readers by Merrie Blocker. A series of short memories arranged in twenty-seven chapters of chronological order and without an overarching dramatic arc, the book becomes a chronicle rather than a novel—a chronicle of a specific time and a specific Jewish immigrant experience. Nevertheless, these are often delicately described, and the book is beautifully translated as Blocker manages to transmit the Portuguese into an English that flows naturally even through paragraph-length sentences, successfully keeping the translation as close as possible to the original phrasing without losing the musicality of Iolovitch’s writing.”—Eva Wissting, Asymptote