The Tunnel by A. B. Yehoshua - #BookReview - Translated by Stuart Schoffman

"The father ladles the thick red tomato sauce with floating yellow egg yolks into two deep, white dishes, and makes room on the table, next to the cheese, for the brain scan. And as the storm rages outside, and daylight grows dim, he turns on a reading lamp so the son can study the convolutions of his father's brain like the innards of a computer."

Zvi Luria has begun to lose his memory. At the beginning he only makes small mistakes, forgetting first names and taking home the wrong child from his grandson's kindergarten, but he knows that things will only get worse. He's 73 and a retired road engineer. His neurologist hints at the path his illness might take and suggests ways of combatting it, with the help of his wife, Dina.

Dina, a respected paediatrician, is keen for him to return to meaningful activity, and suggests he volunteers to work with his old colleagues at the Israel Roads Authority.

This is how Luria finds himself at the Ramon Crater in the Negev desert planning a secret road for the army with the son of his former colleague. But there's a mystery about a certain hill on the route of this road. Who are the people living there and why are they trapped? And should the hill be flattened and the family evicted, or should a tunnel beneath it be built?

With humour and great tenderness, A. B. Yehoshua depicts the love between Luria and his wife as they confront the challenges of his illness. Just when Luria's sense of identity becomes more compromised, then does he find himself on this extraordinary adventure involving people even more vulnerable than himself, enabling a rich meditation on the entwined identities of Israeli Jews and Palestinians and on the nature of memory itself.

Yehoshua weaves a masterful story about a long and loving marriage, interlaced with biting social commentary and caustic humour.

***

I enjoyed reading this book very much indeed. It's gentility was mesmerising and the writing and translation from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman is superb. 

Perhaps wrongly, I would not ordinarily rush to read a book about an elderly man who is grappling with the onset of dementia. My presumption would be that it would be rather depressing as, in reality, it is something that many of us may have to face one day. How wrong that assumption would be as this is a novel that is sensitive, compassionate and full of love. It is often humorous and exquisitely moving.

The book begins with Luria, along with his wife, receiving his dementia diagnosis from the neurologist who advises this elderly retired man to return to work and to be passionate with his wife. Volunteering to assist in designing a road with the company that he used to work for brings the titular tunnel into focus. Not only does the book deal with the designing of a tunnel, which at no point becomes dull, but it is also a metaphor for what Luria feels is happening with his deteriorating brain as he realises that whole sections of his memory are disappearing.

As his condition deteriorates throughout the book we see him become increasingly disorientated. Witnessing his attempts to come to terms with what is happening to him was extremely poignant.

I loved the characters in this book. Luria could be anyone's grandfather. There were several times in this book that I would have happily hugged him.

It is intelligently written and thought provoking. It does not shy away from the Israeli and Palestinian conflict but considers it with awareness and sensitivity. 

An excellent novel that I highly recommend.

ISBN: 978 1912600038

Publisher: Halban

About the Author:

Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A. B. Yehoshua is the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories and several plays and volumes of essays. He has won prizes worldwide and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and adapted for film and opera. An outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies, he continues to speak about and search for solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.







About the Translator:

Stuart Schoffman, a journalist and screenwriter, moved to Jerusalem in 1988. His latest translations of Israeli fiction are To the Edge of Sorrow (Schocken) by Aharon Appelfeld and The Tunnel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by A.B. Yehoshua.

(bio information courtesy of Jewish Review of Books)