The month of June kicks off Reading the World. As part of this project, the NBCC has asked writers from around the globe to recommend a book from beyond these shores. We asked novelist Nathan Englander, author of “The Ministry of Special Cases” and the story collection “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges,” what he had to recommend. He came back with this recommendation for A.B. Yehoshua's recent LA Times Book Prize winner, “A Woman in Jerusalem.”
“In A Woman in Jerusalem, A. B. Yehoshua provides us with the staggeringly real, and unrelentingly surreal, saga of a nation torn apart by violence, in the midst of chaos, that insists on maintaining the standards of decorum, of responsibility and respect, that belong to quieter days. Yehoshua captures—with great humanity, and an unflinching gaze—a reflection of a wounded Jerusalem trying, always, to heal.”