The Tunnel

June 1, 2020
Struggling with early-stage dementia, a recently retired engineer living in Tel Aviv volunteers his services for a military project in the Negev Desert that is threatened by unexpected human complications. Zvi Luria's mental condition first makes itself known through the 72-year-old man's inability to remember people's first names--a failing that results in hapless social encounters. With a boost from his loving, assertive wife, Dina, a respected pediatrician approaching retirement, Luria becomes an unpaid assistant to Maimoni, an admiring young engineer working in his old office. The future of a secret military road in the huge Ramon Crater is thrown into doubt with the discovery that a family of undocumented West Bank Palestinians is living in hiding on a hilltop there in an ancient Nabatean ruin. To protect the dwellers, Luria proposes carving a tunnel through the rock rather than demolishing it. When Dina becomes ill and is unable to keep tabs on her impulsively drifting husband, his grasp on reality weakens. Ultimately so does his opposition to "mixing personal matters and work." In Escher-like fashion, the book spins out multiple versions of reality, including Luria's, in which the light in the tunnel of his consciousness steadily recedes; his wife's and children's in attempting to understand what he is thinking and feeling; and the humiliating mock reality invented by the Palestinians in taking on Hebrew names to pass as Jews. For all its unsettling emotion and dark overtones, this is one of Yehoshua's most spryly amusing efforts. The only first name Luria manages to remember--and keeps repeating--is the Arabic name of a young Palestinian woman who tells him to address her by her adopted name. His adventures with cellphones are priceless. Ultimately, the most important struggle is the one prescribed by his neurologist: "The spirit versus the brain." Whether Luria knows it or not, his spirit is more than willing. A quirky, deeply affecting work by a master storyteller.

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August 1, 2020
A retired highway engineer copes with dementia and changes in the sociopolitical topography of Israel, in the latest from acclaimed Israeli writer Yehoshua, a warmhearted and subtly provocative novel. Zvi Luria forgets his friends' first names, buys way too many tomatoes, and picks someone else's grandkid up from school. To slow the degeneration, he accepts a volunteer position, assisting a younger engineer with a road-building project in the Negev. When the route is complicated by a Palestinian refugee family trapped on a hilltop, Luria draws upon his remaining faculties and designs a tunnel, a radical proposal permitting a degree of coexistence. The symbolism is potent, and consistent with the politically outspoken Yehoshua's recent shift away from his prior advocacy for a two-state solution. Yet Yehoshua never allows politics to dominate. Instead he steers his narrative toward memories of the past, the mysteries of the desert, and the comedic and reconciliatory possibilities opened by forgetfulness. And the story's heart lies in poignant domestic moments between Luria and his wife, as the aging couple together navigate new terrain.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2020

Seventy-plus Tel Aviv-based engineer Zvi Luria must quit his work on the tunnels of the Trans-Israel Highway because of creeping dementia. But he hopes to salvage his wits by serving as an unpaid assistant on a secret military project to build a road inside the Negev Desert's 25-mile-long Ramon Crater. One complication: a Palestinian family lives within the crater's dusty Nabatean ruins under the protection of a mysterious archaeological preservationist, so Zvi proposes a tunnel that will not dislodge them. From the multi-award-winning Israeli author.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2020

A 72-year-old engineer with the Israel Roads Authority, Zvi Luria has quit his job because of encroaching dementia and crankily resists pediatrician wife Dina's efforts to keep him positive. Then he meets Asael Maimoni, son of a former legal adviser the aloof Zvi barely remembers. Asael is building a secret road for the military, Dina recommends Zvi as an unpaid assistant to keep his mind challenged, and soon Zvi is involved in a venture larger than he had anticipated. Asael needs Zvi's tunnel-building expertise because he refuses to flatten a hill along the route he's constructing; with a former army commander, now with the Nature and Parks Authority, he is protecting a small family of Palestinian refugees who live there. As the engrossing, carefully crafted narrative unfolds, Zvi is drawn into the cause, with Yehoshua exploring tangled issues of identity, the uneasy balance of personal and political, the consequences of aging, and what it takes to sustain hope. A shocking final image reminds us never to take anything for granted. VERDICT Multilayered and accessible; from award winner Yehoshua (A Woman in Jerusalem).

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.