A quirky, deeply affecting work by a master storyteller.
Struggling with early-stage dementia, a recently retired engineer living in Tel Aviv volunteers his services for a military project in the Negev Desert that is threatened by unexpected human complications.
Zvi Luria's mental condition first makes itself known through the 72-year-old man's inability to remember people's first names—a failing that results in hapless social encounters. With a boost from his loving, assertive wife, Dina, a respected pediatrician approaching retirement, Luria becomes an unpaid assistant to Maimoni, an admiring young engineer working in his old office. The future of a secret military road in the huge Ramon Crater is thrown into doubt with the discovery that a family of undocumented West Bank Palestinians is living in hiding on a hilltop there in an ancient Nabatean ruin. To protect the dwellers, Luria proposes carving a tunnel through the rock rather than demolishing it. When Dina becomes ill and is unable to keep tabs on her impulsively drifting husband, his grasp on reality weakens. Ultimately so does his opposition to "mixing personal matters and work." In Escher-like fashion, the book spins out multiple versions of reality, including Luria's, in which the light in the tunnel of his consciousness steadily recedes; his wife's and children's in attempting to understand what he is thinking and feeling; and the humiliating mock reality invented by the Palestinians in taking on Hebrew names to pass as Jews. For all its unsettling emotion and dark overtones, this is one of Yehoshua's most spryly amusing efforts. The only first name Luria manages to remember—and keeps repeating—is the Arabic name of a young Palestinian woman who tells him to address her by her adopted name. His adventures with cellphones are priceless. Ultimately, the most important struggle is the one prescribed by his neurologist: "The spirit versus the brain." Whether Luria knows it or not, his spirit is more than willing.
A quirky, deeply affecting work by a master storyteller.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-328-62263-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
IN THE NEWS
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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