Judgment Under Uncertainty

In 1959, a young scholar named Shmuel Ash becomes the caregiver for a cantankerous old man named Gershom Wald. There is, however, a third, mysterious presence in his new home: the daughter of an deceased Zionist leader known as Atalia Abravanel. A beautiful woman in her forties, Atalia entrances young Shmuel even as she keeps him at a distance. Piece by piece, the Jerusalem stone house haunted by tragic history and now home to three misfits and their intricate relationship reveals its secrets. At once an exquisite love story and a coming-of-age novel, an allegory for the state of Israel and its complex relationship with biblical times, Amos Oz’s Judas is a powerful novel in decades.