The Lover [Paperback]

A. B. Yehoshua (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest in Translation | Publication Date: May 7, 1993

The author’s first novel-a dreamlike story of a husband’s obsessive search for his wife’s lover amid the turbulence of the Yom Kippur War. “The story of the search has the elegant symmetry of a cut gem” (New Yorker). Translated by Philip Simpson.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Hebrew

About the Author

A. B. YEHOSHUA is one of Israel's preeminent writers. His novels include Journey to the End of the Millenium, The Liberated Bride, and A Woman in Jerusalem, which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2007. He lives in Haifa.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 7, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156539128
• ISBN-13: 978-0156539128
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250,827 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Israel's Faulkner in a tour de force, September 28, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lover (Paperback)

In a most unusual storyline, a man searches for his wife's lover in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In the meantime, early tension of the Jewish state is plumbed: Ashkenazi vs. Sephardi, man vs. woman, Arab vs. Jew. Told from constantly oscillating viewpoints in the spirit of Faulkner's *As I Lay Dying*, Yehoshua presents a hyperrealistic portrait of modern-day Israel.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite Israeli Novel, January 25, 2003

By 

A. B. Cost (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Lover (Hardcover)

This novel, written shortly after the disastrous Yom Kippur war, captures the complexity of Israeli society through the lives of normal participants.

Rather than lambaste the reader with a litany of politics, the book follows the slightly bizarre, but highly symbolic life of an Israeli family as they attempt to find the Wife's lover - a lapsed Jew from France who returned seeking an inheritance.

The story is unpretentious and surprisingly readable. The author's style is to present each new chapter through the voice of a different character, often retelling the same events from several perspectives.

Through these perspectives - a wealthy secular mechanic, a conflicted rebellious teenage girl, an aging zionist intellectual wife, an elderly native sephardic, a ambitious intelligent palestinian boy, and ultimately through the story of the Lover himself - Yehoshua uncovers the complex stuff that constitutes a very strangely formed nation.

Nuanced, delightfully blasphemous accounts of Zionism like this one are not permitted to be spoken here in the US - but of course in Israel, sophisticated debates about the nature of their society are part and parcel of intellectual life.

Enjoy this book. I give it my highest recommendation.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an extraordinary book one of the best contemporary novelists, August 3, 2004

By 

Barry McCrea (Brooklyn, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lover (Paperback)

Not only is it a startlingly humane, nuanced and difficult portrait of Israel, by an Israeli, but one of the most profound explorations of humanity in its daily round of work and thought I have read.