The Lover

A man searches for his wife’s lover during the Yom Kippur War, in a novel by the award-winning author hailed as the “Israeli Faulkner” (The New York Times).
 
In Haifa, at the dawn of Israel’s 1973 war, the lives of a middle-class garage owner named Adam, and his schoolteacher wife, Asya, have come undone in ways for which they are totally unprepared. Adam has just found out from his distraught wife that she has been having affair—and has fallen in love with—the enigmatic Gabriel Arditi. But Asya’s hysteria isn’t rooted in her admission of infidelity—but rather her discovery that Gabriel has disappeared. Has he gone to war? Has he been killed? Or has he left Asya for another?  Finding him has become Asya’s obsession, and it’s about to become her husband’s, too.
 
Set against the backdrop of a turbulent moment in history and featuring a myriad of characters—each with his or her own versions of events—The Lover is a witty, suspenseful, audacious novel that lays bare the deep-rooted tensions within families, between generations, and between Jews and Arabs, offering “a profound study of personal and political trauma” (Daily Telegraph), from a recipient of honors including the National Jewish Book Award, the Man Booker International Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.