A novel by A.B. Yehoshua (Calmann-Lévy)
In each of his previous novels (L’Amant [The Lover], Un Divorce tardif [A Late Divorce], L’Année des Cinq Saisons [The Year of the Five Seasons]), A.B. Yehoshua plunges us into the modern reality of Israel. For the first time, here is a look at the past.
Five conversations to journey back through two centuries of Jewish wanderings across Europe…
In the skin of five speakers, we rub shoulders with their contemporaries, their anxieties, and together we wonder about the mysterious “Monsieur Séphardique” who wavers between the will to perpetuate himself and the will to put an end to the line.
This back-and-forth not only opens windows onto this militant figure with his fixed ideas — this “Monsieur Séphardique,” or perhaps this Jew — but also casts us into the present, into our own present!
Perhaps it is not A.B. Yehoshua’s best book (how is one to appreciate the reality of the gaze of that simpleminded young Nazi?), but from Yehoshua even the lesser book is already a delight!