Ways to Lucena

In one of his major works, Lucena, Benarroch goes from time travel to social comment, which brings to mind the hilarious novels of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. An old odd ancient man is reaching the age of 1,000 years and has to pass his legacy to his great great great grandson, and prepares him for a journey that will last a thousand years. His first days begin in the Jewish city of Lucena at the beginning of the second millennium and ends in Israel and in Spain. He meets his descendant in a hotel in Malaga, while the young adolescent is trying to find his place in life and family, writing science-fiction short stories and fighting with his parents. This novel will take you back and forth from the future and back to the past, into a world of Sephardi Jewry, the inquisition, Mexican Jews, and back to our present day crazy modernity. 

Lucena is an internal exploration of the why of exile.  And it is a modern road peppered with dialogues, poems, tales and various plots and story lines. All this is set under the solemn shadow of a person called Lucena who is one thousand years old.  For the reader who wants to enjoy and at the same time learn something. This is a rich literary cosmos of hedonism. There, in Elí Hoshaana, May God save us, began the dominance of Judaism in Sefarad and ended that of Babylonia. One hundred fifty years a Jewish city; strong and prosperous. The city of faith and true worship of God, not like today.  The city of my ancestors and yours, a forgotten city, neither so important nor dramatic; Not Toledo or Granada, but then, in the eleventh century, it was a Jewish city. And nobody thought it could ever be a city with no Jews.