A Woman in Jerusalem: A Novel

By: A. B. Yehoshua

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Synopsis: This novel about the struggle to identify a nameless victim in the wake of a terrorist bombing in Israel is &“a masterpiece&” (Claire Messud, The New York Times Book Review). A woman in her forties is a victim of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market. Her body lies unidentified in a hospital morgue. She had apparently worked as a cleaning woman at a bakery, but there is no record of her employment. When a Jerusalem daily accuses the bakery of &“gross negligence and inhumanity toward an employee,&” the bakery&’s owner, overwhelmed by guilt, entrusts the task of figuring out who she was, and burying her, to a human resources man. This man is at first reluctant to take on the job, but as the facts of the woman&’s life take shape—she was an engineer from the former Soviet Union, a non-Jew on a religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and, judging by an early photograph, beautiful—he yields to feelings of regret, atonement, and even love. At once profoundly serious, absorbingly suspenseful, and darkly humorous, A Woman in Jerusalem is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize from the renowned author of The Extra and the New York Times Notable Book A Journey to the End of the Millennium. &“An elegantly structured, thoroughly accessible story, albeit one with rich philosophical layers . . . moves us with deep insights into the meaning of home, belonging and the fate of the stranger.&” —Miami Herald