Novel
Breakdown and Bereavement
שכול וכישלון
Yosef Haim Brenner · 1920
Synopsis
Yehezkel Hefetz, a Jewish immigrant in fragile health, works the land in a small community in Galilee. One April day, an accident in the fields leaves him injured, and his companions take him to Jerusalem. He is treated first in a hospital for the mentally ill, where a nurse from his family assists him, then moves in with his uncle, Yosef Hefetz. His cousin Esther falls in love with him; he does not love her, and the guilt he feels over it weighs on a mind already shaken.
Context
This is Brenner's last novel, published in 1920 under a double title, Shekhol ve-khishalon, or the Book of Hesitation, a year before his death. The action is set in Ottoman Palestine in the years before the First World War, when the relations between Jews and Arabs were taking shape. Brenner, who had arrived in 1909, had himself worked the land before teaching. Hillel Halkin's English translation made the book known outside Israel; it has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
A dark novel, with no French translation; it can be read in English under the title Breakdown and Bereavement.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the high points of Brenner's work and as a classic of Hebrew literature, it was included among Tablet's one hundred and one great Jewish books.
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