A Woman in Jerusalem - Softcover

PRAISE FOR A WOMAN IN JERUSALEM

"The force and deceptive simplicity of a masterpiece . . . embedded in this simple story are fundamental questions about identity, selfhood, belonging."--CLAIRE MESSUD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"A sad, warm, funny book . . . that has deep lessons to impart."--THE ECONOMIST

"[T]he writing is beautifully exact and the moral issues delivered with an understated authority."

--Barbara Hoffert"Library Journal" (06/01/2006)

"This novel has about it the force and deceptive simplicity of a masterpiece: terse, eminently readable but resonantly dense."
--Claire Messud"New York Times Book Review" (08/13/2006)

"Yehoshua is examining a deeper question: what does it mean to be human--humane--especially during troubled times? 'When Jerusalem is burning, does any of this matter?' The answer for both the author and his main character seems to be: 'more than ever.'" --Chrstian Science Monitor

"[An] astonishing new novel...Like sacred music, the deepest chords resound." -- (11/05/2006)

"A moving, unsentimental reckoning with death and renewal."
--Kirkus Reviews (05/15/2006)

New York Times Book Review "100 Notable Books of the Year."--New York Times Book Review (12/10/2006)

Publisher's Weekly "Best Books of the Year" list.-- (11/06/2006)

"This mysterious, quiet meditation on Jerusalem is, I think, about something much greater [than Israel's "problems and identity."] The manager . . . trying to make some meaning of . . . pointless, violent death, as all the structures of his own life fall apart around him, is a figure much bigger and much sadder than even the horrific reality of Israel can suggest."
-- (06/01/2006)

"The author beautifully renders a humanity that transcends culture and ritual, the distinctly personal engagement of a lonely man and the woman in his care, no obstacle too great in a quest for the fulfillment of a promise." --Curled Up With A Good Book.com

A woman in her forties is a victim of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market. Her body lies nameless 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 identifying and burying the victim 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 and highly entertaining, A. B. Yehoshua astonishes us with his masterly, often unexpected turns in the story and with his ability to get under the skin and into the soul of Israel today.