Price £8.99
Format Paperback
Published September 2011
Length 208 pages
ISBN 9781905559244
ISBN 9781905559350 (ebook)
Click to order
Click to order
A Woman in Jerusalem
A.B. Yehoshua
Translated from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman
An armoured vehicle is transporting a coffin back to a distant village in Eastern Europe.
Inside is the victim of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem – a once-beautiful migrant worker who remained unidentified in the morgue for days.
Travelling with the coffin is a motley group of individuals, rendering this journey a tragi-comedy – but one with the deeply moral purpose, not just of returning the worker to her community but also of reinstating her humanity.
This is A.B. Yehoshua at his most humorous – and most compassionate: “As a writer, my ethical duty is to use my pen to pierce the black plastic shroud, to open the heart towards death, with love and pity.”
“There are human riches here. The manager moves from a man who has given up on love to one who opens himself to it. And there are strange and powerful scenes – of the morgue, of the coffin, of the Soviet base where the manager passes through the purging of body and soul.”
Carole Angier, The Independent
“Mr Yehoshua's A Woman in Jerusalem is a sad, warm, funny book about Israel and being Jewish, and one that has deep lessons to impart – for other people as well as his own.”
The Economist
“This novel has about it the force and deceptive simplicity of a masterpiece...”
Claire Messud, The New York Times
A.B. Yehoshua
Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A.B. Yehoshua was the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories, and several plays and volumes of essays. He has won prizes worldwide and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and adapted for film and opera. An outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies, he continued to speak about and search for solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Yehoshua died in June 2022, aged 85.
Visit our Remembering A.B. Yehoshua page to read some of the countless tributes and obituaries that have been written to celebrate Yehoshua’s incredible life and career.
About Stuart Schoffman
Stuart Schoffman was a writer, translator, educator, historian, screenwriter, humourist, a shrewd observer of people and a fount of knowledge which we joyfully shared for many years. Stuart died in November 2021 after battling a serious illness. He enriched our lives personally and professionally and we shall miss him deeply
News
December 2010
A Woman in Jerusalem has been adapted to a feature-length film 'The Human Resources Manager' by director Eran Riklis. See the trailer below:
April 2008
Read A.B. Yehoshua's essay Our Legitimacy published in the special edition of the Jewish Chronicle; 'Israel at 60'.
August 2006
"as a writer, my ethical duty is to use my pen to pierce the black plastic shroud, to open the heart towards death, with love and pity."
Read The Guardian interview with A.B. Yehoshua