All the Rivers: A Novel - Hardcover

Rabinyan, Dorit

 
9780375508295: All the Rivers: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0375508295 ISBN 13: 9780375508295
Verlag: Random House, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

A controversial, award-winning story about the passionate but untenable affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, from one of Israel’s most acclaimed novelists

When Liat meets Hilmi on a blustery autumn afternoon in Greenwich Village, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Charismatic and handsome, Hilmi is a talented young artist from Palestine. Liat, an aspiring translation student, plans to return to Israel the following summer. Despite knowing that their love can be only temporary, that it can exist only away from their conflicted homeland, Liat lets herself be enraptured by Hilmi: by his lively imagination, by his beautiful hands and wise eyes, by his sweetness and devotion.

Together they explore the city, sharing laughs and fantasies and pangs of homesickness. But the unfettered joy they awaken in each other cannot overcome the guilt Liat feels for hiding him from her family in Israel and her Jewish friends in New York. As her departure date looms and her love for Hilmi deepens, Liat must decide whether she is willing to risk alienating her family, her community, and her sense of self for the love of one man.

Banned from classrooms by Israel’s Ministry of Education, Dorit Rabinyan’s remarkable novel contains multitudes. A bold portrayal of the strains—and delights—of a forbidden relationship, All the Rivers (published in Israel as Borderlife) is a love story and a war story, a New York story and a Middle East story, an unflinching foray into the forces that bind us and divide us. “The land is the same land,” Hilmi reminds Liat. “In the end all the rivers flow into the same sea.”

Praise for All the Rivers

“Rabinyan’s book is a sort of Romeo and Juliet, a forbidden love affair between a Jewish girl from Tel Aviv and a Palestinian boy from Hebron. . . . [A] beautiful novel.”—The Guardian 

“A fine, subtle, and disturbing study of the ways in which public events encroach upon the private lives of those who attempt to live and love in peace with each other, and, impossibly, with a riven and irreconcilable world.”—John Banville, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea

“I’m with Dorit Rabinyan. Love, not hate, will save us. Hatred sows hatred, but love can break down barriers.”—Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

“Astonishing . . . [a] precise and elegant love story, drawn with the finest of lines.”—Amos Oz

“Rabinyan’s writing reflects the honesty and modesty of a true artisan.”—Haaretz

“Because the novel strikes the right balance between the personal and the political, and because of her ability to tell a suspenseful and satisfying story, we decided to award Dorit Rabinyan’s [All the Rivers] the 2015 Bernstein Prize.”—From the 2015 Bernstein Prize judges’ decision

“[All the Rivers] ought to be read like J. M. Coetzee or Toni Morrison—from a distance in order to get close.”—Walla!

“Beautiful and sensitive . . . a human tale of rapprochement and separation . . . a noteworthy human and literary achievement.”—Makor Rishon 

“A captivating (and heartbreaking) gem, written in a spectacular style, with a rich, flowing, colorful and addictive language.”—Motke

“A great novel of love and peace.”—La Stampa

“A novel that truly speaks to the heart.”—Corriere della Sera

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dorit Rabinyan is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Persian Brides and Strand of a Thousand Pearls. She is the recipient of the Itzhak Vinner Prize, the Prime Minister’s Prize, an ACUM award, and the Jewish Quarterly–Wingate Prize. All the Rivers, originally published as Borderlife, was named as a book of the year by Haaretz and awarded the prestigious Bernstein Prize. In January 2016 it became the center of a political scandal in Israel when the Ministry of Education banned the book from the high school curriculum. All the Rivers has been translated into seventeen languages.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Part One
Autumn
Chapter 1
 
Someone was at the door. I was vacuuming, with Nirvana on the stereo at full volume, and the polite doorbell chirps had failed to break through, rousing me only when they lost their patience and became long and aggressive. It was mid--November, early on a Saturday afternoon. I’d managed to get a few things done in the morning and was now busy cleaning. I vacuumed the couches and the hardwood floor, my ears bursting with the hollow roar of air and the reverberating music, a monotonous screen of white noise that somehow imbued me with calm. I was free of thoughts as I wielded the suction hose to root out dust and cat fur, entirely focused on the reds and blues of the rug. I snapped out of it when the vacuum’s sigh subsided just as the song was whispering its last sounds. In the three-- or four--second gap before the next track, I heard the sharp, insistent doorbell chime. Like a deaf person who suddenly regains her hearing, I had trouble finding language.
 
“Rak . . .” I stuttered in Hebrew at the door. “Rak rega . . .” Then I corrected myself as I glanced suspiciously at the clock: “Just a minute.”
 
It was one--thirty in the afternoon, but the bleak grayness outside made evening seem near. Through the steamed--up windows looking out from the twelfth floor to the corner of Ninth Street and University Place, I could dimly make out the respectable buildings of Fifth Avenue and a strip of low sky that gleamed like steel, squeezed in above the smoking chimneys.
 
The bell rang again but stopped a moment after I turned off the music. “One minute please . . .” I quickly scanned my reflection in the hallway mirror—-lopsided ponytail, dusty T--shirt and sweatpants, gym shoes—-and flung open the door.
 
Two men in their forties wearing business suits and dark ties stood outside. The one on the right held a document case under his arm and was a head taller than the one on the left, who stood facing me like a cowboy about to draw, or as though he were holding an invisible suitcase in each hand. The impatience conveyed by the right one’s bony fingers tapping on his black leather case, and the relief on the cowboy’s fleshy face, testified to the long minutes they had been waiting at the door.
 
“Hello,” I said, so surprised I was almost voiceless.
 
“Hello, ma’am. We’re very sorry to disturb you. My name is Agent Rogers, and this is my colleague Agent Nelson. We’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. May we come in for a few moments to ask you some questions?”
 
It was the one on the left talking, the gunslinger. His suit looked two sizes too small for his dense, solid body, and he spoke with a smooth inflection that stretched out the words and elongated the ends of syllables as if he were chewing on his tongue. I was frozen, unable to take in the names and titles, nor did I understand the meaning of what he had said until his tall partner, with demonstrative impatience and an unreadably steely expression, reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out something I had only ever seen in movies and TV series: a gilded, embossed police badge.
 
I must have murmured something—-surprised, somewhat contrite—-and blinked, and in light of my stunned deaf--mute response they assumed I had trouble speaking English. The tall one looked over my head, surveying the apartment, and my momentary suspicion that they thought I was the cleaner was reinforced when the bully continued, louder this time:
 
“Just a few questions, please. We’d like to ask you a few questions.” He accentuated his words the way one might speak to a small child, unrolling each syllable. “Is it all right for us to come in?”
 
My embarrassment, and perhaps my affront, roughened my voice. I could hear the tremor underscoring my accent: “May I please know . . .” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, but could you tell me why, please?”
 
I recognized a flash of relief in the cowboy’s eyes. “You’ll understand very soon,” he said, resuming his authoritative tone. “It won’t take more than a few minutes, ma’am.”
 
 
 
In the kitchen I poured myself a glass of tepid water and gulped it down without stopping for air. There was no reason for me to be nervous, my visa was valid, but still, the fact that they were sitting there in the living room, waiting for me to come back so they could interrogate me, was enough to make me anxious. I took two more glasses from the cabinet and wondered whether to call Andrew. He was a friend from back in Israel, from when we were nineteen, and I could ask him to come and confirm that he knew me. But even trying to figure out what I would tell him on the phone was enough to make me thirsty again.
 
By the time I got back to the living room, they’d taken the chairs off the dining table, where I’d overturned them to clean the floor. The tall one had removed his coat and was sitting with his back to the kitchen. I saw the bully standing next to the vacuum cleaner, scanning the room.
 
“Do you live here alone?”
 
A spasm went through my hand and shook the glasses on the tray. “Yes, it’s my friends’ apartment,” I said, and tilted my head at Dudi and Charlene’s wedding photo. “They’re in the Far East. On a long trip. I’m house--sitting and cat--sitting for them.” Franny and Zooey were nowhere to be seen.
 
His gaze lingered on the dishes of water and food under the bookshelf. “And how do you know this couple?” He looked back at the  photograph. “Do they rent or own?”
“It’s their apartment,” I said, still not moving. “I’ve known Dudi for ages, from Israel, he’s a childhood friend of mine, and his wife is American—-”
 
He murmured something and glanced around. “Are you from Israel?”
 
“Yes, sir.”
 
He wandered over to the windows. I watched him for a moment, then took advantage of the opening to approach the table.
 
“How long have you been living here?” he asked.
 
“About two months.” I set the tray down with relief. “They’re supposed to be back in the spring.” I remembered sadly that I was out of cigarettes. “But I have another friend, he’s from here”—-I searched with my eyes for the cordless phone, intending to call Andrew—-“you can ask him—-”
 
“Ask him?”
 
“I don’t know . . .” My voice faltered. “About me . . .”
 
He turned his back and was drawn to the windows again. “That won’t be necessary at this point.”
 
“Thank you very much,” the tall one said, surprising me with a deep, crisp, radio announcer’s voice.
 
“Excuse me?”
 
“Thanks for the water.” He smiled over the bottle. He had perfect teeth, straight and white like in a teeth--whitening commercial.
 
I nodded nervously and held out my passport, which I’d retrieved from my purse, open to the visa page. In the kitchen, even though I knew the visa was valid for another six months, I had double--checked the dates.
 
He turned the passport...

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Verlag
Random House
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375508295
ISBN 13 
9780375508295
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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