Halban Publishers – förlag

Zvi Luria has begun to lose his memory. At the beginning he only makes small mistakes, forgetting first names and taking home the wrong child from his grandson's kindergarten, but he knows that things will only get worse.He's 73 and a retired road engineer. His neurologist hints at the path his illness might take and suggests ways of comabtting it, with the help of his wife Dina.Dina, a respected paediatrician, is keen for him to return to meaningful activity, and suggests he volunteers to work with his old colleagues at the Israel Roads Authority. This is how Luria finds himself at the Ramon Crater in the Negev desert planning a secret road for the army with the son of his former colleague. But there's a mystery about a certain hill on the route of this road. Who are the people living there and why are they trapped? And should the hill be flattened and the family evicted, or should a tunnel beneath it be built?With humour and great tenderness, A.B. Yehoshua depicts the love between Luria and his wife as they confront the challenges of his illness. Just when Luria's sense of identity becomes more compromised, then does he find himself, enabling a rich meditation on the entwined identities of Israeli Jews and Palestinians and on the nature of memory itself.Yehoshua weaves a masterful story about a long and loving marriage, interlaced with biting social commentary and caustic humour.

At birth it was only Amal's father who looked at her and said "I see hope in her face. I want to call her 'Amal'- meaning 'Hope'- in the hope that Allah will give us boys after her." The fifth daughter in a patriarchal society and an indigenous Bedouin in a Jewish state, Amal Elsana came into this world fighting for her right to exist. Today she is a key shaper of public opinion on Israel's marginalized minorities.Hope is a Woman's Name tells of Amal's journey navigating interweaving systems of power and oppression - the patriarchal and the nationalist - in her fight for justice and equality. As a shepherd at the age of 5, she led her flock across the green mountains of Laqiya, her village in the Negev in southern Israel, and later ran literacy classes for the women in her tribe in her early teens, the beginning of a lifelong career organizing people to promote policy change for Israel's Bedouin, a minority within the Palestinian minority. She later established economic empowerment programs for marginalized women, helping to found an Arab-Jewish school, and creating organizations to promote shared society. Where others come up against obstacles, Amal builds bridges; not by sacrificing her identity, but by embracing it. Each thread of her identity - Bedouin, Arab, woman, feminist, Palestinian and Israeli - is woven into the tent of her life, a tent where no one is left out in the sun.

Rachele Luzzato is 12 years old when she learns her father is seriously ill. While her family are looking forward to her Bat-Mitzvah, Rachele's teachers happen to cast her as the Madonna in the school's Christmas play. Pulled in opposing directions, Rachele feels the threads of her life begin to untangle. With the fear of losing her father, various forces compete to guide and take care of Rachele: from her charismatic Jewish grandfather, to her Catholic grandparents on her mother's side; and even an old teacher who believes the young girl might take solace from a nineteenth-century novel. These disparate influences ultimately blend in Rachele's imagination to create a fantasy that transcends the religious and cultural conflicts of her everyday life with one simple hope: to end the loneliness felt by an only daughter. With great subtlety and tenderness, A.B. Yehoshua paints a portrait of a young girl at the beginning of her journey into adulthood.