Open Heart (Harvest in Translation) [Paperback]

A. B. Yehoshua (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997 | Series: Harvest in Translation

In this “astonishing work about love in all its forms” (Washington Post Book World), an ambitious young doctor accompanies his superior to India, where he discovers an illicit passion that threatens to destroy his orderly world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Unlike Yehoshua's previous books, the motives of his central character in his fifth novel, Open Heart, appear unrelated to the larger social changes in Israeli society. During an assignment to India, Dr. Benjamin Rubin falls in love with the country's spiritual mystery and the nurturing sexuality of his patient's mother. In looking to the East for enlightenment, he neglects his religious heritage, even as others are reclaiming traditional Jewish culture. As he immerses himself in newfound religion, one is forced to wonder if Rubin is genuinely acknowledging the self's larger place in the cosmos or is simply on an opportunistic venture to mask his own impoverished spirit. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The irrational, untamable power of love becomes almost palpable in Israeli novelist Yehoshua's intense novel of forbidden passion, obsession and spiritual yearning. Its introspective, ironic narrator, Benjamin Rubin (Benjy), an internist in surgery at a Tel Aviv hospital, is asked by the hospital director, Dr. Lazar, to accompany him to a remote town in India where Lazar's college-dropout daughter, Einat, is suffering from acute hepatitis and urgently needs medical care. Benjy, 29, falls madly in love?not with Einat, whose life he saves, but with Dori, Lazar's matronly, spoiled, ordinary, 50-ish wife, whom he beds once. When she rejects his passion as impossible and silly, Benjy hastily marries hippie-like, kibbutz-raised Michaela, who espouses Hindu religious concepts and works with the "sidewalk doctors" of Calcutta. They have a daughter, Shivi, but, despite their sexual rapport and mutual affection, theirs is not a marriage of love. When Lazar requires open-heart surgery, Benjy, who takes part in the operation, must ask himself whether he truly wants to save the man or whether he wishes Lazar dead so that he can pursue his impossible love for Dori. At times, Benjy's minute self-analysis is wearying, and it's tempting to dismiss his problems as a passing Oedipal fixation. Mostly, however, Yehoshua (Mr. Mani) mingles fascinating medical detail with the story of one man seeking to open his own heart to life's possibilities, including pain. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156004844
• ISBN-13: 978-0156004848
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,217,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A richly rewarding read, January 16, 2004

By 

marina (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Open Heart (Harvest in Translation) (Paperback)

With this novel, Yehoshua again returns to exploring the themes of Love and Identity, this time in a more intimate setting. The impossible, almost grotesque love of a young doctor (Benjy) to the middle-aged mother of his patient is described in detailed realism, yet the story is imbued with a sense of mysticism and mystery. Identities and feelings are exchanged and mixed through blood transfusions, and Love invades one's being as if from an external source. Yehoshua captures the profound mystery permeating "regular" people and situations. The many faces of Love, as well as its imitations, limitations and glaring absences are examined without flinching. Benjy is torn between desolate loneliness and identity-devouring symbiosis; the alternative path of co-existence with autonomy (offered by the independent Michaela) seems to him somehow incompatible with Love.
The Hebrew title of this novel is "The Return from India"; passages infused with Eastern spirituality and the transmigration of souls contrast with minute, surgically-precise medical descriptions and all-too-earthly human ambitions and professional rivalries. The narrative unfolds slowly, luxuriously, allowing the reader to become completely immersed in Yehoshua's world. A wonderful, richly rewarding book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, but worth reading, April 29, 2000

By 

April Wilson (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open Heart (Harvest in Translation) (Paperback)

I read Open Heart after having taken a course with AB Yehoshua and after having read Mr. Mani, A Late Divorce, and The Lover, and found it the least satisfactory of these four novels. (I would give the other 3 five stars.) I found the narrator annoying and his relationship with the fifty year old woman unconvincing. I think Yehoshua is brilliant at depicting all kinds of people except middle aged women, and I don't think he really understood how a woman would react under such circumstances. However, I loved the descriptions of India, and thought the prose style in general made the book worth reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A 5-star story with a lazy shrug at the end, May 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Heart (Harvest in Translation) (Paperback)

I sank into Open Heart with delight, having just finished Journey to the End of the Millenium, a wonderful book. Yehoshua's humor and sophistication won me over in both books. He knows people. And the translations were excellent. Still, the final pages of Open Heart were a big disappointment: it was as though he'd had to rush off and couldn't be bothered to finish what he'd started.