A Room

The novel is built from three parts that appear independent and slowly fuse. On an Israeli army base, eight soldiers labour in a small, crowded room over a training film. In Paris, a painting student takes three clochards into a mortuary to serve as models for a picture. And in a land of legend, a king and his high priest force their own people and their defeated enemies to build an enormous monument to a deity. Out of minute details of people, objects and nature, the book assembles whole life stories, an army sergeant, soldiers of the Lebanon war, an old Parisian vagrant, all of them trying to hold on to some piece of happiness, and asks what art, and a person, can do against the immensity of existence.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

506 pages in the original

Set in

Israel, France

First published

1999 by Am Oved

Author's age

44 when first published

ISBN

9789651313059 (original)

9781628971330 (Dalkey Archive Press, United States)