The Liberated Bride - Paperback

by A. B. Yehoshua (Author)

Yochanan Rivlin, a professor at Haifa University, is a man of boundless and often na ve curiosity. His wife, Hagit, a district judge, is tolerant of almost everything but her husband's faults and prevarications. Frequent arguments aside, they are a well-adjusted couple with two grown sons.
When one of Rivlin's students-a young Arab bride from a village in the Galilee-is assigned to help with his research in recent Algerian history, a two-pronged mystery develops. As they probe the causes of the bloody Algerian civil war, Rivlin also becomes obsessed with his son's failed marriage.
Rivlin's search leads to a number of improbable escapades. In this comedy of manners, at once deeply serious and highly entertaining, Yehoshua brilliantly portrays characters from disparate sectors of Israeli life, united above all by a very human desire for, and fear of, the truth in politics and life.

Front Jacket

Yochanan Rivlin, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Haifa University, is determined to understand two conflicts that have become central in his life - the Algerian civil war of the 1990s and his son's divorce. His is a double search for truth, each involving a different bride - Samaher, his own research assistant, an ambitious Arab newlywed from a village in the Galilee, and Galya, who deserted his son in Jerusalem with no explanation. Against his wife's better judgment, Rivlin obsessively tries to get to the core of both problems, crossing boundaries at once personal and political - man and wife, father and son, teacher and pupil, Israeli and Arab.
With equal measures of energy, humor, anxiety, and poetry, Yehoshua portrays a life sometimes improbable, often dark, and infinitely rich. The Liberated Bride is a feat of masterly storytelling from one of the world's great novelists.

Back Jacket

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A world-class writer at the height of his powers." --The Boston Globe
Yochanan Rivlin, professor of Near Eastern studies at Haifa University, is a man of boundless and often naive curiosity. His wife Hagit is tolerant of almost everything but her husband's faults and prevarications. Rivlin's obsession with his eldest son's failed marriage proves to be one such problem. Why did his bride leave him, though to all appearances they had been at peace together?
While his wife warns him that the truth is always relative and often painful besides, Rivlin's search leads to a number of improbable escapades. In this comedy of manners, at once deeply serious and highly entertaining, Yehoshua richly portrays disparate sectors of Israeli life - Jewish and Arab, urban and rural, religious and secular, middle-class and lower-class, educated and uneducated. And characters with a very human desire for, and fear of, the truth in politics and in life.
"The pure craft of a writer in exceptional form." -- The Washington Post Book World
A. B. Yehoshua is the widely acclaimed author of numerous novels, including JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE MILLENIUM, FIVE SEASONS, MR. MANI, THE LOVER, and OPEN HEART. One of Israel's preeminent writers, he has been awarded the Israeli Prize, the Koret Jewish Book Award, and the National Jewish Book Award. He lives in Haifa.
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