Translated from the Danish by Anne Born From Denmark to Riga and back, through two World Wars, to India and Afghanistan, to America as it was and as it is, and through boarding schools, mental hospitals, and almshouses for the poor, Suzanne Brogger's "The Jade Cat" is a sweeping family saga of almost limitless ambition. At the heart of the narrative and of this Jewish family unit is the grandmother, Katze, and her memories. She tells the story from her patrician apartment in Copenhagen's Gammel Mint 14, where she has lived since the 1940s. It is a haunting portrait of the pride, conceit, grandness, and despair that has followed the Levin family while the world outside the old apartment gradually fell apart. The family remains prey to drug addiction and suicide attempts. Some escape into sex, others into Evangelical politics or religion. With an unlikely but sympathetic cast of grotesques, this gripping saga of Danish highlife and lowlife through three generations of a tormented family is as diverse and uncompromising as William Styron's "SophieAs Choice" and Isabel Allende's "House of Spirits."