Hello, tea party attendees! We’re so excited to have Aden Polydoros, author of The City Beautiful as a guest at our tea party today.
Death lurks around every corner in this unforgettable Jewish historical fantasy about a city, a boy, and the shadows of the past that bind them both together.
Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity, and he dreams of the day he’ll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania.
But when Alter’s best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World’s Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than anyone knows.
Now, with only days to spare until the dybbuk takes over Alter’s body completely, the two boys must race to track down the killer—before the killer claims them next.
Links for The City Beautiful: Goodreads | TheStorygraph | Bookshop | IndieBound
Hi Aden! Thank you so much for joining our tea party today! We’re so excited you’re here. For our friends who might be meeting you for the first time, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and The City Beautiful? In addition, are there any trigger/content warnings readers should be aware of for The City Beautiful?
Of course! THE CITY BEAUTIFUL is a gothic fantasy YA novel with a queer Jewish protagonist. In the novel, Alter, a seventeen-year-old immigrant from Romania, becomes possessed by his best friend’s dybbuk and is pulled into a deadly hunt for a serial killer before the vengeful spirit takes over his body for good. With the help of Frankie, a morally questionable pickpocket-turned-boxer, and Raizel, a budding journalist at Chicago’s top anarchist newspaper, Alter searches for his friend’s killer, and along the way he also finds the redemption and closure he’s been searching for all along.
Although THE CITY BEAUTIFUL isn’t my first book to be published, it is the one I feel closest to. In the last few years, it’s become so important to me to write the kinds of books where queer and Jewish readers will be able to see themselves as the heroes. I’m currently working to complete my MFA in creative writing. In the future I hope to work in the media or video game industry, helping produce more inclusive content.
Content warnings: Violence, murder, discussion/recounting of rape (not on page), loss of a loved one, drowning, anger issues, antisemitism, alcoholism
The City Beautiful is an ownvoices, Jewish, queer Gothic historical fantasy novel set in 1893 Chicago – Can you tell us about how this book came to be?
I’ve always been interested in Jewish history, but I feel like the majority of books with Jewish main characters focus on the Holocaust. The 1880s and 1890s saw a significant influx of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe, so I thought it would be interesting to set a fantasy novel during that time. At first I just wanted to have a story set during the 1893 World’s Fair, since I find it fascinating, but as I researched the setting further (and came across mentions of a real serial killer operating in Chicago during that time), a more distinct plot began to come together in my mind.
We saw that one of your favorite things about The City Beautiful are the descriptions of delicious food. If The City Beautiful was a tea party, what sort of treats would your characters bring?
Ooh, I love this question. While there isn’t a tea party in the book, Frankie does end up treating Alter to a Russian style tearoom.
– Alter would spend all day baking in order to create the perfect treat, likely some kind of cookie or cake.
– Frankie would not catch the memo, and upon hearing mention of a party, would end up bringing something a little stronger than tea.
– Raizel would bring something simple and not overly indulgent, like fresh seasonal fruit or tea sandwiches.
Something that we’re really passionate about is mental health representation, and while we’ve still got a long way to go, it’s nice to see that we’re starting to get more of that in YA. We loved reading your tweets about trauma and mental health in YA, and was wondering if you have any recommendations for other books that you loved that also focus on healing from trauma, and mental health?
While I unfortunately haven’t read anything recently dealing with trauma and mental health, I really adore The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily by Laura Creedle, which has an ownvoices protagonist with ADHD.
In the vaguest way possible, can you tell us about a scene or moment in The City Beautiful that you loved writing?
I think one of my favorite scenes would have to be when Alter falls through a slaughterhouse floor in Chicago and ends up for a brief while in an Ukrainian sunflower field.
Finally, what’s the main thing you hope readers will take away from The City Beautiful?
This is a good question. I think I just hope that they’ll enjoy it and realize that Jewish people and LGBTQ+ people are so much more multifaceted than the stereotypes propagated on social media. I don’t really want readers to take away any particular lesson from this book; I didn’t write it to educate readers on what it means to be queer or Jewish, or to have these characters act as representatives.
