A.B. Yehoshua's Books

Open Heart

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Open Heart is a psychological tour de fource about love and the nature of man's soul. From the opening lines of this first-person narrative, the reader is propelled into the mind of Dr. Benjamin Rubin, an ambitious young internist, who is jockeying for position with the hospital's top surgeons. But it isn't until Benjy learns that his position has been terminated, and that he has been selected to accompany the hospital administrator and his wife to India to retrieve their ailing daughter, that Yehoshua sets his hero on a journey of self-discovery.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

529

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559496

ISBN 13

9781905559497

The Extra

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Extra

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

After her father’s death, a musician must go home to Israel to confront the relationships she left behind in this novel by the author of The Retrospective Noga, forty-two and divorced, is a harpist with an orchestra in the Netherlands. Upon the sudden death of her father, she is summoned home to Jerusalem by her brother to help make decisions in urgent family and personal matters. Returning also means facing a former husband who left her when she refused him children, but whose passion for her remains even though he is remarried and the father of two. For her imposed three-month residence in Israel, her brother finds her work as an extra in movies, television, and opera. These new identities undermine the firm boundaries of behavior heretofore protected by the music she plays, and Noga, always an extra in someone else’s story, takes charge of the plot. The Extra is Yehoshua at his liveliest storytelling best—a bravura performance. “Engaging…Yehoshua is a master in his visual sketches of scenes.”—The New York Times Book Review “[A] finely etched new novel…A marvel of a book.”—Haaretz “Four and a half decades after his first book’s publication, his twentieth shows Yehoshua’s writing chops are undiminished and his content fearlessly topical.”—New York Journal of Books “Rich in reflection and personal truth…Masterful.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Award-winning Israeli novelist Yehoshua gives moral force, even grandeur, to the inevitable push-pull of one family’s life.”—Library Journal, starred review

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

294

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544715934

ISBN 13

9780544715936

The Lover

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Lover

By: A.B. Yehoshua

A husband seeks his wife's lover who is lost in the turbulence of Israel's Yom Kippur War. As the story of his quest unfolds and grows in intensity, the main protagonists are drawn into the search and transformed by it: through the different perspective of husband, wife, teenage daughter, young Arab emerges a complex picture of the uneasy present, the tension between generations, between Israel's past and future, between Jews and Arabs. The Lover was A.B. Yehoshua's first novel and immediately brought him international recognition. It is brilliant, compassionate and highly original and as accomplished as all his later works.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

396

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559445

ISBN 13

9781905559442

The Retrospective

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Retrospective

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

An ageing film director must face his past in the acclaimed Israeli author’s prize-winning novel—“a compelling meditation on art, memory, love [and] guilt” (Independent, UK). Yair Moses, an aging Israeli film director, has been invited to the Spanish pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela for a retrospective of his work. Accompanied by Ruth, his leading actress and longtime muse, Moses discovers a painting in their hotel room that triggers a distant memory from one of his early films: a scene that caused a rift with his brilliant but difficult screenwriter—who, as it happens, was once Ruth’s lover. Upon their return to Israel, Moses decides to travel to the south to look for his elusive former partner and propose a new collaboration. But the screenwriter demands a price that will have strange and lasting consequences. A searching and original novel by one of the world’s most esteemed writers, The Retrospective is a meditation on mortality and intimacy, on the limits of memory and the struggle of artistic creation. Winner, 2012 Prix Médicis étranger Winner, 2012 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

390

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547501676

ISBN 13

9780547501673

A Late Divorce

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Late Divorce

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Yehuda Kaminka, a retired teacher, returns to Israel from the U.S. to divorce his estranged wife who was committed to a mental asylum after she stabbed him. This impending divorce inevitably throws into turmoil the couple's three children and grandson. Yehuda's nine days, leading up to Passover, are remembered by different members of the family: A.B. Yehoshua's brilliance reveals itself in these different voices, each a minor masterpiece.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

387

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559453

ISBN 13

9781905559459

A Journey to the End of the Millennium

A Novel of the Middle Ages

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Journey to the End of the Millennium

A Novel of the Middle Ages

By: A. B. Yehoshua

“A masterpiece” about faith, race, and morality at a medieval turning point, from the National Jewish Book Award winner and “Israeli Faulkner” (The New York Times). It’s edging toward the end of the year 999 when Ben Attar, a Moroccan Jewish merchant from Tangiers, takes two wives—an act of bigamy that results in the moral objections of his nephew and business partner, Raphael Abulafia, and the dissolution of their once profitable enterprise of importing treasures from the Atlas Mountains. Abulafia’s repudiation triggers a potentially perilous move by Attar to set things right—by setting sail for medieval Paris to challenge his nephew, and his nephew’s own pious wife, face to face. Accompanied by a Spanish rabbi, a Muslim trader, a timid young slave, a crew of Arab sailors, and his two veiled wives, Attar will soon find himself in an even more dangerous battle—with the Christian zealots who fear that Jews and others they see as immoral infidels will impede the coming of Jesus at the dawn of a new millennium. From the author of A Woman in Jerusalem, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, this is an insightful portrait of a unique moment in history as well as the timeless issues that still trouble us today. “The end of the first millennium comes to represent only one of many breaches—between north and south, Christians and Jews, Jews and Muslims, Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews, men and women—across which A. B. Yehoshua's extraordinary novel delivers us.” —The New York Times

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

318

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547541058

ISBN 13

9780547541051

Five Seasons

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Five Seasons

By: A.B. Yehoshua

In the autumn, Molkho's wife dies. His years of loving care have ended and his newfound freedom proves unlike the one he had imagined. It is an uneasy freedom, filled with the erotic fantasies of a man who must fall in love, but whose longing for meaningful relationships is held hostage by the spirit of his wife. Five Seasons is a subtle and often comic novel about love and renewal, and the determination of a seasoned heart to love.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

348

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559461

ISBN 13

9781905559466

Mr. Mani

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Mr. Mani

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

New York Times Notable Book: A story of six generations of a Jewish family, by an author Saul Bellow called “one of Israel’s world-class writers.” In this novel, a winner of both the National Jewish Book Award and the first Israeli Literature Prize, A. B. Yehoshua weaves a deeply affecting family saga and an portrait of Jewish life over the past two centuries. The story moves backward through time, unfolding over the course of five conversations. On a kibbutz in the Negev in 1982, a student describes her strange meeting with her boyfriend’s father, Judge Gavriel Mani. On German-occupied Crete in 1944, a Nazi soldier recounts his attempts to hunt down the Mani family. In Jerusalem in 1918, a Jewish lawyer in the British army briefs his commanding officer on the forthcoming trial of the political agitator Yosef Mani. In a village in southern Poland in 1899, a young doctor reports back to his father on his travels, and on his sister’s romance with Dr. Moshe Mani. And in Athens in 1848, Avraham Mani reveals the heartbreaking tale of the death of his son, Yonef, in Jerusalem. Alfred Kazin hailed Mr. Mani as “one of the most remarkable pieces of fiction I have ever read.” Named as one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, it is both an absorbing tale and a powerful statement about family, faith, and the weight of history. Translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

383

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547542453

ISBN 13

9780547542454

The Tunnel

A Novel

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Tunnel

A Novel

By: A.B. Yehoshua

From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Israeli author, a suspenseful and poignant story of a family coping with the sudden mental decline of their beloved husband and father—an engineer who they discover is involved in an ominous secret military project Until recently, Zvi Luria was a healthy man in his seventies, an engineer living in Tel Aviv with his wife, Dina, visiting with their two children whenever possible. Now he is showing signs of early dementia, and his work on the tunnels of the Trans-Israel Highway is no longer possible. To keep his mind sharp, Zvi decides to take a job as the unpaid assistant to Asael Maimoni, a young engineer involved in a secret military project: a road to be built inside the massive Ramon Crater in the northern Negev Desert. The challenge of the road, however, is compounded by strange circumstances. Living secretly on the proposed route, amid ancient Nabatean ruins, is a Palestinian family under the protection of an enigmatic archaeological preservationist. Zvi rises to the occasion, proposing a tunnel that would not dislodge the family. But when his wife falls sick, circumstances begin to spiral . . . The Tunnel—wry, wistful, and a tour de force of vital social commentary—is Yehoshua at his finest.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

337

Publisher

HarperCollins

Published Date

ISBN 10

132862255X

ISBN 13

9781328622556

The Only Daughter

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Only Daughter

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Rachele Luzzatto is the only daughter of a Jewish family in northern Italy. Curious and intelligent, she is caught between her interest in religions – her own and others – and her father's violent rejection of them all. A disagreement ensues between them about the part she is given in the school nativity play. At the same time, she discovers that her father is ill; the severity of his illness is only revealed to her very gradually while her teacher, various members of her family and even her rabbi offer her wide-ranging and humane support. A.B. Yehoshua paints a complex, and humorous, picture of conflicting religious identities and historical memory in this tender character study of a young girl at the threshold of adulthood.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

145

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1912600145

ISBN 13

9781912600144

Five Seasons

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Five Seasons

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

This tale of an awkward Israeli widower and his misadventures with women is an “extraordinary novel . . . a masterpiece” (Los Angeles Times). After seven long years of illness, Molkho’s wife passes, leaving him in mourning, but also with an unexpected sense of freedom. No longer is he bound to being a caretaker for a woman too sick to even bear his touch. His future—and his desires—are his own. As the seasons of his life propel the hapless middle-aged accountant through a series of journeys and a string of infatuations—with an unwanted wife, an aggressive bureaucrat, a young girl, and a Russian émigré—Molkho begins to find the real element that was missing in his life was not romance, but his own will. An absurd, tragic, humorous, and hopeful meditation on love, marriage, and the quiet struggles of average Israeli lives, Five Seasons “reconfirms [A. B. Yehoshua’s] status as a shrewd analyst of domestic ordeals” (Publishers Weekly).

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

369

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544139909

ISBN 13

9780544139909

A Late Divorce

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Late Divorce

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

387

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559453

ISBN 13

9781905559459

The Retrospective

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Retrospective

By: A.B. Yehoshua

An ageing film director, Yair Moses, has been invited to the Spanish pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela to attend a retrospective of his early work. As he and Ruth, his leading actress and former muse, settle into their room at the parador, Moses notices a painting depicting the classical story of an elderly prisoner nursing at the breast of a young woman. For the first time in decades, Moses recalls a similar scene from one of his early films, which led to his dramatic estrangement from his screenwriter, Trigano. Trigano's spirit haunts the retrospective, as the director and actress re-live each film. They question artistic decisions and are surprised at how differently each remembers the past, slowly revealing to each other past reasons for decisions taken at the time. A troubled Moses decides to seek out the elusive Trigano to settle their differences, and to propose a new collaboration. But the reluctant screenwriter demands an outrageous price for this reconciliation: Moses must commit to a deeply disturbing act of atonement. Ultimately, reality and the sublime mingle when Moses has an epiphany, as he nears the end of his quest and the source of his imagination. Searching, witty and trenchant, this work by an internationally respected and original writer is a meditation on the roots of artistic inspiration, the limits and the truth of memory, and the struggle for artistic creation.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

341

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559577

ISBN 13

9781905559572

The Extra

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Extra

By: A.B. Yehoshua

An experiment is under way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: a woman, recently widowed, is starting a trial period in assisted living, mainly to placate her over-anxious son, whilst in Jerusalem her daughter Noga, a young harpist, returns from her job with a Dutch orchestra to look after the family apartment. To enliven her stay, Noga's brother finds work for her - playing roles as an extra in film, TV, and in the opera Carmen. The random roles Noga is thrust into resonate strangely with her own life which she begins to re-evaluate. Central to her past is the fact that she refused to have children, resulting in the break-up of her marriage. No-one in her family understood her motives for not wanting children and everyone has a different explanation for it. Now, a chance encounter with her former husband reveals his continuing powerful, love as well as a shocking deed she committed during their marriage. But Noga is a free spirit neither tied to the past nor defined by it, and always keen to push boundaries. She lives for her music and is willing to go wherever it takes her. The three-month experiment proves as much of a test for her as for her mother and both are radically transformed by the end. A.B. Yehoshua is as creative, humorous and provocative as ever in The Extra, exploring themes familiar to him of love, family relationships and artistic ambitions, set mainly in an ever-changing Jerusalem.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

307

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559801

ISBN 13

9781905559800

A Journey to the End of the Millennium

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Journey to the End of the Millennium

By: A.B. Yehoshua

The year is 999 A.D. Christians in Europe are preparing themselves for the arrival of the Messiah at the millennium and religious fervour is in the air. Sailing from the North African port of Tangier to a small, distant town called Paris are a Jewish merchant, Ben Attar, his two beloved wives and his Arab partner, Abu Lutfi. They have come for a meeting with their third partner the widower, Raphael Abulafia who has been forced to turn his back on their previous trading partnership because of his new wife's distrust of the dual marriage of Ben Attar. The latter turns this annual trading voyage into a personal quest to legitimise his second wife, restore his honour and, equally important, to show others the richness and humanity in his way of life. A confrontation ensues between people of different cultures whose ways of living and loving are so different, and yet who are of the same religion, believe in the same God and in the same morality. Thus we enter a profound human drama whose moral conflicts of fidelity and desire resonate deeply with our times. A. B. Yehoshua has imaginatively recreated a medieval world with its merchant trade in great depth and sensuous detail. His evocation of one man's love is lyrical, erotic even, and A Journey to the End of the Millennium will rank with the best of Yehoshua's work.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

351

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

190555950X

ISBN 13

9781905559503

The Lover

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Lover

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

396

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559445

ISBN 13

9781905559442

The Tunnel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Tunnel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Israeli author, a suspenseful and poignant story of a family coping with the sudden mental decline of their beloved husband and father--an engineer who they discover is involved in an ominous secret military project Until recently, Zvi Luria was a healthy man in his seventies, an engineer living in Tel Aviv with his wife, Dina, visiting with their two children whenever possible. Now he is showing signs of early dementia, and his work on the tunnels of the Trans-Israel Highway is no longer possible. To keep his mind sharp, Zvi decides to take a job as the unpaid assistant to Asael Maimoni, a young engineer involved in a secret military project: a road to be built inside the massive Ramon Crater in the northern Negev Desert. The challenge of the road, however, is compounded by strange circumstances. Living secretly on the proposed route, amid ancient Nabatean ruins, is a Palestinian family under the protection of an enigmatic archaeological preservationist. Zvi rises to the occasion, proposing a tunnel that would not dislodge the family. But when his wife falls sick, circumstances begin to spiral . . . The Tunnel--wry, wistful, and a tour de force of vital social commentary--is Yehoshua at his finest.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

337

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1328622630

ISBN 13

9781328622631

The Only Daughter

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Only Daughter

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

145

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1912600145

ISBN 13

9781912600144

The Continuing Silence of a Poet

The Collected Stories of A.B. Yehoshua

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Continuing Silence of a Poet

The Collected Stories of A.B. Yehoshua

By: A.B. Yehoshua

This new edition of A. B. Yehoshua's novellas and short stories includes two stories which did not previously appear in the hardback edition published in 1988, and no longer includes 'Mr. Mani' which, in the intervening years, has been developed into a prize-winning novel. The development of the author's style can be traced from its dark beginnings in stories such as 'The Yatir Evening Express', about a village which decides to vent its frustration at its isolation and insignificance on the evening express. Isolation and loneliness are central to Yehoshua's concerns, whether it be people's isolation from each other, from their community or from their family. The pain of this isolation is intense, as in the title story in which the distance between an ageing poet and his simple son is agonising. In 'Facing the Forests', a fire-watcher's isolation gives rise to deep longings for tragedy – a story which has since been seen to symbolise the relationship between Jew and Arab in Israel. Several of the stories deal with people thrust into positions of responsibility and the feelings of frustration and impotence which ensue are disturbing – murderous even. In 'Three Days and a Child', a man agrees to care for the three-year old son of a former lover. Those three days are marked by a strange detachment and sadistic, heart-stopping neglect of the child. The stories are ironic and understated, and the pace masterly. This collection confirms Yehoshua's talent as a major short-story writer. He has been awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for his entire œuvre.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

496

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1912600102

ISBN 13

9781912600106

Open Heart

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Open Heart

By: A.B. Yehoshua

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

529

Publisher

Halban Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1905559496

ISBN 13

9781905559497

Five Seasons

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Five Seasons

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

369

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544139909

ISBN 13

9780544139909

The Story of Crime and Punishment

By: AB Yehoshua,Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Story of Crime and Punishment

By: AB Yehoshua,Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You should go to a street corner and get down on your knees and tell the whole world: "I have sinned." Raskolnikov is a poor student living in St Petersburg. Desperate to escape his poverty, he murders his pawnbroker and her sister, and flees with a few watches and bits of jewellery. Although at first nobody suspects him, his own conscience plagues him incessantly - and it isn't long before a highly intelligent police detective by the name of Petrovich begins to have his doubts about Raskolnikov's innocence, and is determined to make him confess. Dave Eggers says, of the series: "I couldn't be prouder to be a part of it. Ever since Alessandro conceived this idea I thought it was brilliant. The editions that they've complied have been lushly illustrated and elegantly designed.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

Pushkin Children's Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

178269014X

ISBN 13

9781782690146

Friendly Fire

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Friendly Fire

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

“A fine novel of loss and hope” set in modern Israel and East Africa, from the author of A Woman in Jerusalem (TheBoston Globe). During Hanukkah, Ya’ari, an engineer, and his wife, Daniela, are spending an unaccustomed week apart after years of marriage. While he’s kept busy juggling the day-to-day needs of his elderly father, his children, and his grandchildren, Daniela flies from Tel Aviv to East Africa to mourn the death of her older sister. There she confronts her anguished brother-in-law, Yirmi, whose soldier son was killed six years earlier in the West Bank by “friendly fire.” Yirmi is now managing a team of African researchers digging for the bones of man’s primate ancestors—as he desperately strives to detach himself from every shred of his identity, Jewish and Israeli. From an author who has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, this is “a haunting book . . . that will resonate for a long time in the minds of its readers” (The Washington Post Book World). “As in each of his wisely tragicomic novels, Yehoshua orchestrates nearly absurd predicaments that serve as conduits to Israel’s confounding conflicts, which so intensely and sorrowfully encapsulate our endless struggle for peace and belonging.” —Booklist

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

401

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547427557

ISBN 13

9780547427553

The Liberated Bride

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Liberated Bride

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

An Israeli professor and an Arab student join forces in a witty novel that “tells a simple story about a region that complicates all it touches” (The New Yorker). Yochanan Rivlin, a professor at Haifa University, is a man of boundless and often naïve curiosity. His wife, Hagit, a district judge, is tolerant of almost everything but her husband’s faults and prevarications. Frequent arguments aside, they are a well-adjusted couple with two grown sons. When one of Rivlin’s students—a young Arab bride from a village in the Galilee—is assigned to help with his research in recent Algerian history, a two-pronged mystery develops. As they probe the causes of the bloody Algerian civil war, Rivlin also becomes obsessed with his son’s failed marriage. Rivlin’s search leads to a number of improbable escapades. In this comedy of manners, at once deeply serious and highly entertaining, Yehoshua brilliantly portrays characters from disparate sectors of Israeli life, united above all by a very human desire for, and fear of, the truth in politics and life.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

576

Publisher

HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547541414

ISBN 13

9780547541419

A Woman in Jerusalem

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A Woman in Jerusalem

A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

This novel about the struggle to identify a nameless victim in the wake of a terrorist bombing in Israel is “a masterpiece” (Claire Messud, The New York Times Book Review). A woman in her forties is a victim of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market. Her body lies unidentified in a hospital morgue. She had apparently worked as a cleaning woman at a bakery, but there is no record of her employment. When a Jerusalem daily accuses the bakery of “gross negligence and inhumanity toward an employee,” the bakery’s owner, overwhelmed by guilt, entrusts the task of figuring out who she was, and burying her, to a human resources man. This man is at first reluctant to take on the job, but as the facts of the woman’s life take shape—she was an engineer from the former Soviet Union, a non-Jew on a religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and, judging by an early photograph, beautiful—he yields to feelings of regret, atonement, and even love. At once profoundly serious, absorbingly suspenseful, and darkly humorous, A Woman in Jerusalem is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize from the renowned author of The Extra and the New York Times Notable Book A Journey to the End of the Millennium. “An elegantly structured, thoroughly accessible story, albeit one with rich philosophical layers . . . moves us with deep insights into the meaning of home, belonging and the fate of the stranger.” —Miami Herald

Average ratings

N/A