OPEN HEART – A. B. YEHOSHUA
OPEN HEART
A. B. Yehoshua
trans. by Dalya Bilu
Hardback, 1996
£16.99, 498pp, 1 870015 63 0
A. B. Yehoshua was nominated for
With the publication of Open Heart, internationally acclaimed
Israeli novelist A. B. Yehoshua has written a psychological tour de force
that takes as its subject nothing less than love and the nature of
man’s soul. From the opening lines of this
first-person narrative, the reader is propelled into the mind of Dr.
Benjamin Rubin, an ambitious young internist, who is jockeying for
position with the hospital’s top surgeons.
But it isn’t until Benjy learns that his internship has been terminated,
and that he has been selected to accompany the hospital administrator and
his wife to India to retrieve their ailing daughter, that Yehoshua sets
his hero on a journey of self-discovery. This journey brings the supremely
rational, coolheaded physician to surrender all his deeply held beliefs
when his experience in India awakens an erotic passion that dares to
destroy his tidy world as he pursues the illicit love of the
administrator’s wife.
A study of family dynamics, substitute parents, Oedipal struggles, and
symbiotic love, Open Heart gathers all these themes and throws them
into high relief with Eastern philosophy. Whether describing open-heart
surgery, religion, sexual obsession, or the transmigration of souls,
Yehoshua has written a masterful reckoning of mortality in this gripping
novel of love, betrayal and rebirth.
"A. B. Yehoshua is an old-fashioned master, without stylistic
pyrotechnics or needless experimentation. His chief asset is his belief in
a powerful story deftly delivered."
Times
Literary Supplement
"The novel flows powerfully in fluent, confident yet simple prose: it has a
compelling story line and vividly drawn characters, and it is infused with a
big and serious theme, the nature of love and the mysteries of the human soul."
The Washington Post
"At times literary and mannered, at times incantatory and magical, sometimes
disturbing and often astonishing, Open Heart never fails to entertain the
mind while it captivates the soul."
The Seattle Times
Read
an article about A. B. Yehoshua from The Guardian
Read
an article about A. B. Yehoshua from The Independent
Read
an article about Yehoshua's life and fiction from The Jewish Quarterly
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