A Woman in Jerusalem: Summary and book reviews of A Woman in Jerusalem by A Yehoshua, plus links to an excerpt from A Woman in Jerusalem and a biography of A Yehoshua.

A woman in her forties is a victim of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market. Her body lies nameless 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 identifying and burying the victim 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 and highly entertaining, A. B. Yehoshua astonishes us with his masterly, often unexpected turns in the story and with his ability to get under the skin and into the soul of Israel today.

BookBrowse

This is not a book about Jerusalem per se. In fact, with a few changes here and there the story could have been located in almost any city that attracts migrant workers and where people have become somewhat blasé to violence and death (and, sadly, there are quite a few such places these days).

The title makes more sense (or less, depending on one's perspective) with Yehoshua's explanation that in all the other translations other than English, the book is titled The Mission of the Human Resources Manager. However, the British and Americans firmly demanded a change of title as they feared the original would be misinterpreted as an instruction manual - so the author agreed to the change "painfully and with great difficulty".  (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Full Review (621 words).

Media Reviews

The New York Times - Claire Messud Embedded in this simple story are fundamental questions about identity, selfhood, belonging....a work of art by turns absurd, strange and moving.   Library Journal The writing is beautifully exact and the moral issues delivered with understated authority. Yet the protagonist's circumscribed nature and grinding battles to accomplish his goal can lend the narrative an airless and boxed-in feel.   Kirkus Reviews A moving, unsentimental reckoning with death and renewal.   Booklist - Donna Seaman Tautly composed in a manner akin to Kafka and Babel, Yehoshua's brilliant under-your-skin satire subtly evokes thoughts of war and terrorism, vulnerability and fate, the sacred and the profane.   Publishers Weekly Starred Review. This short novel's layers reveal themselves only gradually and, once revealed, continue to compel and provoke.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Deborah Winant
Sorrow about Yulia
This book is a metaphor as it deals with a symbolic existence of nameless people. Only the dead woman has a name. The characters are identified by their functions in the society where they live.The opening paragraph refers to the end of the story...   Read More

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