No Ballyhoo: 2nd FINALIST FOR THE 2015 USA REGIONAL EXCELLENCE AWARDS (NE)

"A modern and intelligent fairy tale set into a muti - ethical and multi religious New York City in the prospective of different generations. Full of humour and kindness, the reader can enjoy one gentle love story between a young Jew and a Muslim that grow day after the day in the streets of the 'unofficial' capital of the modern world. Martino's writing demonstrates a forward looking mind that plays both with imagination and philosophy talking about serious matters as faith and hope, as well about rock music and food. It reminds the Haruki Murakami's work in the sense of the solid confrontation among different cultures united by a deep sense of humanity and friendship. A book to dream and laugh, but also to think about meaning of existence told trough intense dialogues. Nice as a glass of cold sparkling white wine you drink in sunny summer day, warm as the red wine you share with the woman of you life." - Marco Spagnoli (Critic, Journalist and Filmaker) No Ballyhoo by Canadian-Italian-Turkish novelist Mauro Mevlud Martino is a kaleidoscopic look at New York life from the perspective of three generations in the Big Apple starting from the early 1900s to modern day. The novel is a microscopic look into the Polish-Jewish Cohen family beginning with Leonard Schwartz Cohen who had a prized pickling business from which he sold his famous dills from street carts of Krakow, Poland and later in Brooklyn, NY. Leonard's pickles sewed the seeds of the great Cohen family history and a gilded jar is kept on the home mantelpiece like a praiseworthy Academy Award, a reminder of the long Cohen dill pickling legacy. From philosophic world views in references to Jung and Freud to religious beliefs - Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, even atheist; from the exotic and traditional dishes of Istanbul, Poland, Italy, India, Africa mixed with the New World eclectic flavors of America and Canada; from the drumming of African percussions, American jazz, Turkish pipes, Polish waltzes and everything else that echoes into John's cafe from the bowels of the Martini-Cohen retro music store Last Year's Music to the grand silences and gaps of expressionless emotion that a great love renders when it happens; here between Kirk Cohen and his Turkish love interest Hesychia Mancuso; from holy books to canonic literature; from salt Kosher dishes to sweet honeyed treats of Turkey... No Ballyhoo is A Moveable Feast.- Vanessa McMahon (author, filmmaker and producer)