English-speaking audiences can now enjoy this work of autobiographical fiction from award-winning Israeli author Haim Sabato. The story’s main character shares his name with the author and, like Sabato, he comes to Jerusalem from Egypt as a child in the 1950’s.
From the time he is a boy, Haim is taken with Moshe Farkash, a learned Hungarian immigrant who seems both mysterious and larger-than-life. The book chronicles their relationship, following Haim from youth through fatherhood. Farkash’s story centers around war and the Holocaust, and his character allows Sabato to explore themes of loss, survival, forgiveness, and rebuilding.
Beautifully written, and accented with poetry, the book paints a true picture of the immigrant experience and the Jewish State coming into its own. Sabato’s description of the sirens wailing during synagogue services on that fated Yom Kippur in 1973 and the ensuing activity is especially striking and will resonate with readers who lived through this era.