Karin Ciholas

Karin Ciholas is a novelist, playwright, painter, and professor emerita of French and German at Centre College. Raised in Switzerland, she studied classical languages before completing advanced work in languages and comparative literature through the University of North Carolina. The Lighthouse opens her Cyrenian Trilogy and places a fictional Jewish physician named Simon within first-century Cyrene, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Rome. His medical calling, family obligations, and pursuit of justice bring him into contact with Roman power and conflicts affecting Jewish communities. Ciholas drew on years of teaching languages, humanities, and the ancient world, as well as her interest in the meeting of Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Roman traditions. The lighthouse of Alexandria serves as a historical landmark and a symbol of guidance within the novel. The Lighthouse begins a sequence continued by The Bronze Door and The Temple at Sunset, carrying Simon’s family across a period of religious and political change.