- Sapir Prize for Literature 2000 · Shortlist
The Pure Element of Time
חבלים · Havalim
Haim Be'er (חיים באר, born 1945)
Translated by Barbara Harshav
English editions
In EnglishThe Pure Element of Time
Brandeis University Press · United States · 20 December 2002 · 282 pages
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The narrator sets out to understand the two people who made him. His father came from Russia and holds on to life with all his strength. His mother, born in Jerusalem, is educated and afraid of nothing; she turns against the faith and values of her forebears and fights hard against bereavement, betrayal and a marriage coming apart. Their two stories, which are also the story of the son's own life, are woven together against a city weighed down by its past glory, from the last years of British rule to the austerity of the young state. The tone shifts between compassion and an unsparing, sometimes cruel clarity, as the writer's most intimate memories become a reckoning with himself.
AI-generated summary
About the book
- Form
- Novel
- Length
- 332 pages in the original
- Genres
- Family, Autofiction (assigned by AI)
- Set in
- Israel, 1940s–1950s
- First published
- 1998 by Am Oved
- Author's age
- 53 when first published
- ISBN
9789651312618 (original)
9781584652779 (Brandeis University Press, United States)
- More
- Wikidata