AHARON APPELFELD is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Iron Tracks, Until the Dawn's Light (both winners of the National Jewish Book Award), The Story of a Life (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger), and Badenheim 1939. Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award. Blooms of Darkness won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012 and was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine), in 1932, he died in Israel in 2018.
"Reconfirms the widespread view that he is one of the most subtle,
uncompromising, and concentrated stylists of contemporary prose
fiction."
—Houston Chronicle
Appelfeld's dark tale of brother-sister incest is a jolting allegory of faith tested and found wanting. Caretakers of a mountaintop cemetery consecrated to Jewish martyrs--the setting is left deliberately vague--Amalia and her elder brother Gad lead a spartan existence, subsisting on visitors' alms while observing an age-old covenant to preserve this holy site. Once Gad seduces Amalia, they succumb repeatedly to an act they know is sinful, weakened as they are by despair, isolation and liquor. Through flashbacks we learn how Amalia as a girl was cruelly beaten by her unloving mother while her father passively looked on. Her misery extends to the present when she discovers that she is pregnant by her brother; predictably, a series of misfortunes transpires. Gad begs forgiveness, but his belated atonement cannot prevent the slowly unfolding tragedy. Most of Israeli novelist Appelfeld's previous books ( Badenheim 1939 ; Katerina ) have dealt obliquely with the Holocaust; in widening his focus here, he has not achieved the power of his previous works. Although the beginning is suspenseful, once the incest is revealed, the narrative's bleak inevitability does not lead to further insight. (Jan.)
"Reconfirms the widespread view that he is one of the most subtle,
uncompromising, and concentrated stylists of contemporary prose
fiction."
-Houston Chronicle
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
