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In The Eternal Bride Orpaz let himself go with a boldness and freedom surpassing his previous books. The novel centers around a metaphor of power. Grandma Levana, the demonic mother-figure, is one of the dual focuses of the book, a woman capable of great love and great hatred. Like a mythological goddess, she sets out to take personal revenge on a city of sin. What follows reads like an eighteenth-century tale of intrigue, children's games played by grownups, or a burlesque of a mythological plot. There is a parallel plot about the banished son, a refugee from an unspecified catastrophe. His shrunken masculine world contrasts with the brilliantly colored world of Grandma Levana. A blind man, a mute and a chicken improvise to meet their basic daily needs, while ceaselessly searching for something they have already found, or will never find. All that remains for them is the experience of loss, dangling between memory and paradise. My immediate response to Orpaz's new book can be summed up in one word: astonishment.... A profound and important work destined to be a classic of modern Hebrew literature. Navoth empahsizes
Critic Amnon Navoth This book, so imaginative and profound is born from the author's attempt to bridge the gap between his Israeli mentality and his Jewish roots...The finest and most profound of all Orpaz's books. A masterpiece.
Critic Ortzion Bartana. |
