Jerusalem Poker [Hardcover]

Edward Whittemore (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 405 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st edition (March 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0030185165
• ISBN-13: 978-0030185168
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,241,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A winning hand, July 14, 2006

By 

P. Tancred "bookmuncher" (Amman, Jordan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jerusalem Poker (Paperback)

Jerusalem Poker deserves to be in Amazon's top 10 sellers list and the only reason that it languishes, instead, at about 315,940 is that no-one knows about it. I wouldn't know about it either if I hadn't happened upon it in a second hand bookshop in about 1983. I count its discovery as one of the most serendipitous literary finds of my life and I regret that its author, Edward Whittemore, is dead and I can't tell him so.
JP is the second in Whittemore's Middle East quartet but can stand (magnificently) alone. While the first book, Sinai Tapestry, introduces some of the characters who make Jerusalem Poker so memorable, it is less accomplished than JP and might not appeal to a reader who has not already been converted to diehard Whittemorism by first reading Jerusalem Poker.
JP tells the stories of three men, Cairo Martyr, Munk Szondi and O'Sullivan Beare, who fetch up in Jerusalem in the aftermath of the First World War and who, in the dank back room of 3000-year old antiquities dealer, Haj Harun, begin a 12-year poker game in which the fate of Jerusalem itself is at stake.
Whittemore's real main character is the city of Jerusalem itself, faithfully defended throughout all the years of its existence by poor gentle old Haj Harun in his faded yellow cloak and rusty Crusader helmet, usually ignored, often reviled and always befuddled about which of Jerusalem's many attackers he is currently facing.
But Jerusalem and Haj Harun are just two of the beguiling characters conjured by Whittemore's inventive and original mind. Szondi, Martyr and O'Sullivan Beare, and a host of minor players, some weird, some mad, all memorable, career through history, adventure, misadventure, tragedy, love and time to end up somehow entangled in the affairs of the ancient city.
Jerusalem Poker defies synopsis, description or analysis. It is the sort of novel that seizes the reader with the first paragraph and drags them through pages of wonder, humour, pathos and fabulous prose until spitting them out at the end, winded, delighted and doomed to reread it at least several more times.
If you have ever been bemused by the seeming lunacy of Middle Eastern politics, Jerusalem Poker will lead you, sometimes gently, sometimes bloodily and frequently humorously through some of the historical thickets from which the madness arose. Or, if you are the sort of reader who likes to be possessed by a book, to fall in love with its words and cherish its characters and ideas, Jerusalem Poker is the one you've been looking for.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful, ingenious, bigger on the inside..., November 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Jerusalem Poker (Paperback)

This is an exceptionally clever and broad-ranging book. If you like Pynchon but prefer a slightly more realistic, less-{in love with his own cleverness} style, try this---maybe we can get this back in print.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best least known books, bring it back into print., September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Jerusalem Poker (Hardcover)

Jerusalem Poker and Sinai Tapestry are the two best books of the four books which make up the fantastic Jerusalem Quartet. A broad ranging story which spans decades and continents where characters paths intertwine like the fibres of a fine Persian carpet. The novel is centered around a twelve year long poker-game between an arab, a christian, and a jew. Where the stakes are the entire city of Jerusalem.