Throughout the novel there are very significant and fundamental mentions and regards to an idea of cyclical history, meaning that history will inevitably and unfortunately repeat itself. Violence and persecutions reoccur rather than being learned from. 

• Evidence across the narratives:

  • In the 1480s Jews were accused of blood libel, leading to their inevitable execution

  • In the 1940s Jews were accused of being subhuman, leading to a genocide

  • In the 1990s Ethiopian Jews faced racism, despite being "rescued"

  • Another key example was Othello being a racial outsider despite his military service and government work

• Phillips explores these topics in an attempt to challenge ideas of historical progress

• There is current relevance to the topics he discussed such as Jewish individuals facing antisemitism on a global scale due to the IDF and Israeli government's decisions

During the novel there are key points of trauma impairing memory and survivors of traumatic experiences being unable to form linear narratives

• Evidence across the narratives:

  • Eva's fragmented memories

  • Uncle Stephan is haunted by memories of his family

  • The novel's non-linear structure mirrors that of traumatic memory

  • "Memory. That untidy room with unpredictable visiting hours. I am forever being thrust through the door and into that untidy room" (Phillips 7)'

  • Eva progresses through speaking to struggling to speak to an eventual silence and total dissociation 

Definition of displacement: "The enforced departure of people from their homes, typically because of war, persecution, or natural disaster."

Definition of diaspora: "The dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland."

Evidence:

• Jews were repeatedly expelled

• Orthello: African in Venice, never truly at "home"

• Malka: Moved from Ethiopia to Israel but does not belong

• Question: Where is home when the homeland rejects you?

Multiple meanings:

• Blood libel

• Bloodlines (racial purity)

• Violence (blood spilled in persecution)

• Menstruation 

Examples:

• Portobuffole "need a little Christian blood for our bread"

• Eva: menstruating women selected for death