The Art of Being A Stranger

A Family Memoir
Written and illustrated by Karen Bermann

Published by the University of Toronto Press, September 2025

A vividly illustrated family memoir told in the voices of father and daughter, The Art of Being a Stranger grapples with the challenges of displacement and historical memory across generations in the wake of the Holocaust. Karen Bermann grew up in the mad orbit of her father, Fritz, the rebellious child of a Viennese Orthodox Jewish family who fled Europe alone as an adolescent in the late 1930s. An irreverent, comic, rageful man with three names, who spoke three languages, lived on three continents, and always kept his papers in order, Fritz’s life was shaped by survival. In this memoir, told in alternating voices in brief, lyrical episodes, Bermann explores not only the mystery of her father but also the inheritances he passed on: intergenerational trauma, fragile familial bonds, and a fraught sense of belonging. The Art of Being a Stranger is a darkly funny narrative told in poetry, prose, and mixed-media drawings. While her father taught her how to save herself, Bermann realized early on that what she truly needed was to be saved from him. Set against the backdrop of 1960s and 1970s New York City, The Art of Being a Stranger is a poignant comic-drama that offers an intimate, layered exploration of parents and children in the shadow of history.

“Beautiful and unsentimental, Karen Bermann’s The Art of Being a Stranger reminds me of the timeless truth articulated by Franz Kafka: “If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

—Robert Jan Van Pelt, Professor of Architecture, University of Waterloo

“There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and Karen Bermann’s Vienna to Palestine to Queens tale is a great one – full of vivid details about New York City infrastructure and the pathos of refugee life.”

—J. Hoberman, author of Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds

“The Art of Being a Stranger is a meditation in ink and silence. Karen Bermann traces the fragile lines of memory, exile, and belonging with aching beauty. Through luminous panels and quiet revelation, she tells a story of a family lost and found, and of identities blurred and reborn. This is not just a graphic novel – it is a lyrical elegy, drawn from the heart’s deepest archive.”

—Miles Hyman, painter, author, and illustrator of graphic adaptations for James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery

“The Art of Being a Stranger is a book of such tenderness, love, beauty, and insight that I had to take a long walk before returning to its words and pictures. Once I finished and “saw” I returned to it to “see” again. Karen Bermann is that kind of artist. I wanted to inhale this masterpiece, to carry it inside me, to stare at it as one does an amazing painting, seeing new details each time. If there is one book – not a historical treatise, but an elegy to a father and a lost world – that helps us understand historical trauma, the frailty of religion, the horror of war, the durability of love, and yes, the meaning of living in the world today, it is this book.”

—Caroline Heller, author of Reading Claudius: A Dual Memoir

“The warp of Nazi hatred and the weft of Jewish fury have seldom been woven into such a singular fabric. The Art of Being a Stranger is different from all other books in its combination of apparent simplicity and deep insight into a tragedy that will forever be unfolding.”

—Andrew Solomon, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the National Book Award

“Karen Bermann’s gorgeously crafted graphic novel, like Käthe Kollwitz’s drawings, is hauntingly evocative. It brings the sadness and glory of a twentieth century refugee family to life in its richly textured, often wildly comic mix of poetry and prose.”

—Jay Neugeboren and Eli Neugeboren, author and artist of Whatever Happened to Frankie King