Husband and Wife - Softcover

Zeruya Shalev

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841952850 ISBN 13: 9781841952857

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

One morning, without warning and out of nowhere, Na'ama Newman wakes up to a new reality. Her husband, until now a healthy, active tour guide, announces that he cannot get out of bed. Reminiscent of Kafka's Metamorphis, we have full view of the relationship between Udi, who has gone on 'strike' and his wife, who tries to cope with the crisis in their marriage. In a novel that moves and shifts with extraordinary pace, Shalev captivatingly weaves her multi-coloured threads into a single delicate fabric. Courageous and utterly convincing, this novel challenges 'the way things are'.

About this title

About the Author:

Zeruya Shalev, poet and novelist, was raised on a kibbutz in Israel and now lives in Jerusalem. She has a Master's degree in biblical studies and is chief literary editor of an Israeli publishing house. Love Life, her first work of fiction, won the Golden Book Prize in Israel.

From Publishers Weekly:

Little occurs outside the racing mind of Na'ama Newman, the intensely thoughtful narrator of this second novel by Shalev (Love Life). Na'ama is a social worker who heals ailing young mothers and their children, though she is unable to turn an observant eye on the lives of her own husband and child, or herself. When her husband, Udi, a healthy hiking guide who periodically leaves the family for long, solitary jaunts into nature, wakes up one morning unable to move his legs, Na'ama begins an inner monologue, wrestling over whether to take him to the hospital, where she will surely have to share him and the blame for whatever ails him with nurses, doctors and the rest of the world, or whether to keep him at home, where she and their nine-year-old daughter Noga can finally have a constant relationship with him. As Udi lies in bed, Na'ama's thoughts crash against each other: she recalls a brief though damaging affair, the perfection of her and Udi's adolescent love, and the ways Noga has borne the brunt of their sour marriage. When Na'ama learns Udi is suffering from conversive paralysis, a sickness in which mental stress is expressed physically, she is wildly jealous of the illness, saying, "so that's what she's called, his new woman, conversion." Shalev, an Israeli literary editor, has created a novel entirely devoid of standard dialogue, choosing instead to convey snatches of conversation, arguments and whispers of love in stream-of-consciousness prose. Her language is hauntingly, painfully lyrical, and her understanding of the conflicted human yearning for connection and solitude astounds.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1841952850
• ISBN 13: 9781841952857
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288