Journey to the End of the Millennium [Hardcover]

Abraham B. Yehoshua (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0385488823 | ISBN-13: 978-0385488822 | Publication Date: January 19, 1999 | Edition: 1st

A brilliantly conceived novel about bigamy and one man's tragic search for validation at the end of the first millennium, by the critically acclaimed author of "Mr. Mani" and "A Late Divorce".

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One would think from all the brouhaha about the imminent arrival of Y2K that the world had never experienced a change of millennium. In fact, we've been through it all before, as A.B. Yehoshua reminds us in his novel, A Journey to the End of the Millennium. The year is 999 and the protagonist is Ben Attar, a North African Jewish merchant who has, for many years, been in profitable partnership with his nephew Abulafia and a Muslim trader named Abu Lutfi. But when Abulafia marries a German Jew who disapproves of his uncle's two wives, the partnership is suddenly dissolved and Ben Attar finds himself out of business.

Abulafia's repudiation of his uncle sets the stage for Ben Attar's journey into the heart of Europe at the turn of the millennium. Accompanied by a rabbi, both his wives, and Abu Lutfi, our hero sails to Paris, where he hopes to persuade his nephew's wife that his marriage to two women is both legally and morally permissible. Yehoshua's tale is more than just a travelog through the Europe of the 10th century; it is also a meditation on religion, law, and the differences between the European Sephardic tradition and that of the Middle Eastern Ashkenazic Jews--differences that echo the current social and ideological conflicts within Israel today.

From Publishers Weekly

Eminent Israeli writer Yehoshua (Open Heart) offers a provocative, if somewhat ponderous parable about the birth of modern morality, women's rights and the prospects for Jewish survival. In A.D. 999, Ben Attar, a wealthy Jewish merchant from Tangier, embarks on a perilous voyage to Paris accompanied by his two wives, his Arab partner, a rabbi from Seville and a young black slave. His goal is to convince his nephew and ex-business partner, Raphael Abulafia, that bigamy (common among Arabs and not unheard-of among medieval Jews, we are told) is an honorable practice; that it's possible to love two wives equally and fairly. Raphael's wife, Esther-Minna, a worldly-wise Frankish widow, is morally repulsed by Ben Attar's bigamy, hence the business partnership's rupture. Punctuated by sultry lovemaking scenes and wondrously suffused with the customs, beliefs, food and medicine of the Middle Ages, the novel's spiritual compass navigates between a variety of polarities: the industrious, puritanical north and the sensual, easygoing south; Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewry; Christians and Jews; and medieval and modern mores. Ben Attar may be a decent, honest man by the standards of his time, but from our vantage point, he is fundamentally self-deluded. His two wives are nameless, veiled, shadowy figures, and he uneasily acquiesces when, on the return voyage, his Arab partner discloses newly acquired human cargo: eight slaves shackled in the ship's hold. That these are fair-skinned slaves only compounds the ironies as Yehoshua explores the anatomy of prejudice, desire, passion and self-righteousness. The overwritten story, which holds up a mirror to our own millennial angst, is nearly shipwrecked by serpentine, stately prose, a near-total absence of dialogue and deadweight descriptive passages.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (January 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385488823
• ISBN-13: 978-0385488822
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,376,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yehoshua's Gift, August 2, 2001

By 

Robert N Newman (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Journey to the End of the Millennium - A Novel of the Middle Ages (Paperback)

I read "A Journey to the End of the Millenium" several months ago and even now it still sits clearly etched in my mind as one of the most enjoyable and astounding reads in recent memory. I recommended it to one very special friend and she too felt that way. Yehoshua's gift is to take us back to a time and a place so different than our modern times and gently and humorously and with vivid detail lead us into this world. Nothing is taken for granted and we are introduced to the smells, sights, winds, nature, food,travel and people's attitudes about love, health, death, sex, spirituality, clothes, justice, kindness and everything else that is of importance now and 1,000 years ago. NOthing is omitted. It is so well "painted" that it almost feels as if he was there or at least was talking to his very real characters over time. Yehoshua deals with such spiritual themes as "loshon hora" or evil tongue both between Jews and Jews and Jews and Gentiles, treating one's spouse(s), fair business dealings, Jewish ritual, and justice both religous and civil. He deals with the Ashkenazic/Sephardic relationship in a way that illustrates the deep rootededness of some of the differences. All of this takes place over the course of a trip from the Sephardic regions of North Africa through Spain, France and into Eastern Europe. Of course, it is at the eve of the Crusades and arguably a dark age so the story is fraught with a real sense of danger and adventure. There is also, as I experienced it, a continual dichotomy between the forces of enlightenment and darkness in the story. It is unusual to read a book with enough "soul" to make you feel persoanlly uplifted all wrapped up in a hugely entertaining story. One of the best historical novels I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Obviously the author's humor, style and skill came through the translator perfectly. I wholeheartedly recommend this book and it has started me on a journey of Mr. Yehoshua's work.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Identity Crisis, May 29, 2000

By 

emma phillips (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journey to the End of the Millennium (Hardcover)

I've been struggling with this book in conjunction with Mr Mani, as part of a paper on Sephardic identity in the writing of A B Yehoshua. Strangely, I find myself agreeing with both the positive and negative reviews - which strongly suggests that the book is a bit of a curate's egg, good in parts! As with Mr Mani, the historical detail is excellent. Even given the tedious nature of a narrative style with no dialogue, ABY succeeds in painting a tremendously powerful and engaging portrait of the Mediterranean and North European world of 999 AD, As an historical epic, if you can get past the boredom threshold somewhere around the middle of the book, it succeeds quite well. But ABY's forte is in the internal journey into the human psyche. Mr Mani is an excellent example - probably the best - of ABY's virtuosity at peeling off the layers of human motivation in all their complexity and, very often, perversity. In contrast, this novel depicts a somewhat stereotyped cultural clash between individuals. Anyone familiar with Israeli literature in the past 25 years will also be familiar with the general thrust of the argument. Ashkenazi culture denies the depth and breadth of Sephardi culture. It ignores the cultural heritage of Sephardi Jews, which certainly up to the first millenium and well beyond, held sway over Ashkenazi Jewry. Ashkenazi culture has a tendency to introversion and rejection,whereas Sephardi culture is expansive and interactive, especially with regard to Islam... and so on, and so forth. The hegemonic Ashkenazic view of Sephardi history and culture has been comprehensively deconstructed over the last twenty five years - why go over this ground, especially when in Mr Mani he has already 'deconstructed the deconstruction' by dissecting the history and psychopathology of a high status Sephardi family so comprehensively and brilliantly? As for the dual marriage thing, well I think there's a limit to most people's cultural relativism - especially most women's! It just doesn't work, not as love story and certainly not as erotic writing. Its unlike ABY to fob us off with stereoyped based narrative in order to score ideological points. So... a reasonably good read, but well below top form for the master.

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Multi-leveled, Multi-cultural Look At History, November 29, 1999

By 

Richard L. Pangburn (Bardstown, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Journey to the End of the Millennium (Hardcover)

Many of the other reviewers here must be too young to understand the important topics at hand. There are too many of them to be discussed here, but let me give you one, just for instance.

Why are the names of the wives not revealed? As you get deeper into the novel you realize that the two wives are the same wife, the only wife. A man who truly loves a woman loves her for what she truly is, her essence.

If you are an older woman, you will know that you are not just who you are now, but also who you were then, a younger woman still existing in the old, despite appearences. And the carnal and the spiritual exist together in the essence.

Also, on another level, this is an historic tale of 999, when many Christians predicted the end of the world and an extermination of non-believers, when many held to the letter of the Holy Scripture as a justification of owning slaves and multiple wives. This book takes a sharp look at the conflict between tradition and the evolution of law, and helps us bring current conflicts into focus.

Yehoshua is a something of a magician, a master of misdirection who hides the duality of his intent until the reader is ready. Then everything clicks into place. This is a novel you'll want to read again just to see how he does it.