Judas

Winter of 1959, Jerusalem. The eternal student, Shmuel Ash—kind-hearted and romantic—doesn’t know what he wants from life. One day he sees a mysterious notice on the bulletin board: a quiet, easy job for a student of the humanities. Intrigued, Shmuel goes to an old neighborhood of Jerusalem. In a crumbling house, old as the city itself, lives an intellectual named Gershom Wald. He needs someone he can talk and argue with. In return, Shmuel is offered room, board, and modest support. The house also has Atalia, a mysterious beauty with a chilling detachment. Old Wald and Atalia are bound together by a past full of secrets. Shmuel spends hours chatting with the old man, becomes shy before the mysterious Atalia, and becomes more and more absorbed in the theme of Judas’s betrayal—one that philosophical arguments constantly circle. The puzzles connected with this woman won’t let him go. And as his investigation grows ever deeper—almost like a detective story—he learns an incredible and terrifying history of Atalia and Wald. The new novel by Israeli classic Amos Oz is about betrayal and what it is at its core—about the dark side of Jewish-Christian relations that has left its mark on modern Arab-Jewish history as well. Amos Oz’s tender, gently ironic prose is full of inner tension; it immerses you in the mysterious atmosphere of long-gone old Jerusalem and in the enigmatic story of Judas.