Open Heart
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“Seductively heady . . . Ingeniously explores the unfathomable mysteries of the heart.” —Philadelphia Inquirer
A young Israeli intern vying for the position of surgeon learns that his internship has been terminated and he has been chosen to accompany the hospital administrator and his wife on a trip to India. There, the couple intend to retrieve their ailing daughter and bring her back to Israel. The long journey awakens urges in the young doctor that will threaten his carefully contained world.
Juxtaposing Western realism and Eastern mysticism, Open Heart is an “astonishing work about love in all its forms. [One that] speaks across the barriers of translation and culture to readers everywhere” (Washington Post Book World).
“At times incantatory and magical, sometimes disturbing, and often astonishing . . . Entertains the mind while it captivates the soul.” —Seattle Times
"Mind-expanding and poetic, a book that will stay with you long after you have turned its final page.” —New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The irrational, untamable power of love becomes almost palpable in Israeli novelist Yehoshua's intense novel of forbidden passion, obsession and spiritual yearning. Its introspective, ironic narrator, Benjamin Rubin (Benjy), an internist in surgery at a Tel Aviv hospital, is asked by the hospital director, Dr. Lazar, to accompany him to a remote town in India where Lazar's college-dropout daughter, Einat, is suffering from acute hepatitis and urgently needs medical care. Benjy, 29, falls madly in love--not with Einat, whose life he saves, but with Dori, Lazar's matronly, spoiled, ordinary, 50-ish wife, whom he beds once. When she rejects his passion as impossible and silly, Benjy hastily marries hippie-like, kibbutz-raised Michaela, who espouses Hindu religious concepts and works with the "sidewalk doctors" of Calcutta. They have a daughter, Shivi, but, despite their sexual rapport and mutual affection, theirs is not a marriage of love. When Lazar requires open-heart surgery, Benjy, who takes part in the operation, must ask himself whether he truly wants to save the man or whether he wishes Lazar dead so that he can pursue his impossible love for Dori. At times, Benjy's minute self-analysis is wearying, and it's tempting to dismiss his problems as a passing Oedipal fixation. Mostly, however, Yehoshua (Mr. Mani) mingles fascinating medical detail with the story of one man seeking to open his own heart to life's possibilities, including pain. Author tour.
