From Publishers Weekly
The biblical rivalry between Esau and his younger twin, Jacob, who tricks him out of their father's blessing, serves as the prototype for this yeasty, vibrant and sprawling modern-day family saga from Israeli novelist Shalev (The Blue Mountain). Esau, born in 1923 in Prague, grows up in Palestine, where his fault-finding, overworked father, Abraham, runs a bakery and seethes with resentment at the twins' aggressive, free-spirited mother, Sarah, a Russian convert to Judaism. Jacob marries Leah-the woman Esau loves-and inherits their father's bakery; Esau, disgruntled, emigrates to the U.S., becomes a gourmet food columnist and suffers through a string of meaningless affairs. Narrated by Esau with a genial cynicism, the novel shuttles back and forth between the U.S. and Israel from the 1920s through the '70s, unreeling dozens of stories of sorrow, joy, death, war and love. Into this engrossing tapestry, Shalev weaves three seemingly unrelated tales-one concerning a duke's Rabelaisian journey to Alexandria and Jerusalem in 1898, the others tragic stories of obsession-that eventually intersect with the main plot in surprising and ingenious ways.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In his second novel, Israeli novelist Shalev (The Blue Mountain, LJ 6/1/91) once again exhibits his masterful ability to blend impressions, history, and fantasy. Beginning around the time of World War I, he chronicles about a half century in the lives of the Levy family and also plays on the biblical expectations of the stories of the patriarchs, their wives, and their children. The patriach of the family, a baker named Abraham, has been humbled early in marriage by his strong wife, Sara. In an amazing journey with the couple's frightened young twins, Esau and Jacob, Sarah becomes a human beast of burden of almost mythic proportions. She carries them to her family, who live in the plains of Palestine, where Abraham can set up his own bakery away from his family's domination. This and other fantastic tales are narrated by the book's title character, who has left what is now Israel to become a writer in America. A best seller in Israel, this beautifully translated novel would be a fine addition to any general fiction collection.
Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
