Synopses & Reviews
From the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Israeli author, a stunning novella that brilliantly illuminates a young girl's crisis of faith and coming of age in Padua, Italy.
Rachele Luzzato is twelve years old when she learns her father is gravely ill. While her family plans for her upcoming Bat-Mitzvah, Rachele finds herself cast as the Madonna in her school's Christmas play. Caught between spiritual poles, struggling to cope with her father's mortality, Rachele feels as if the threads of her everyday life are unravelling.
A diverse circle of adults are there to guide young Rachele as she faces the difficult passing of childhood, including her charismatic Jewish grandfather, her maternal Catholic grandparents, and even an old teacher who believes the young girl might find solace in a nineteenth-century novel. These spiritual tributaries ultimately converge in Rachele's imagination, creating a fantasy that transcends the microcosm of her daily life with one simple hope: an end to the loneliness felt by an only daughter.
In this wondrous story that combines the piercing wisdom of Nicole Krauss's The History of Love, the poignancy of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend; and the magical flight of Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, A. B. Yehoshua paints a warm and subtle portrait of a young girl at the cusp of her journey into adulthood.
Review
"We all need them, brothers and sisters and writers who speak to us as if they were our older brothers (and sisters). A. B. Yehoshua is." — La Repubblica
Review
"[Yehoshua is] an Israeli Faulkner." — Harold Bloom, The New York Times
Review
"A wise, masterfully understated work by one of Israel's towering literary figures." — Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
About the Author
A. B. YEHOSHUA (1936-2022) was born in Jerusalem to a Sephardi family. Drawing comparisons to William Faulkner and described by Saul Bellow as "one of Israel's world-class writers," Yehoshua, an ardent humanist and titan of storytelling, distinguished himself from contemporaries with his diverse exploration of Israeli identity. His work, which has been translated into twenty-eight languages, includes two National Jewish Book Award winners (Five Seasons and Mr. Mani) and has received countless honors worldwide, including the International Booker Prize shortlist and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Woman in Jerusalem).
STUART SCHOFFMAN, a journalist and translator, is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and editor of Havruta: A Journal of Jewish Conversation.