The Loves of Judith

Meir Shalev
Translation, Harris/Elon Literary Agency

Rights sold:
USA, Ecco Press;
UK, Canongate;
Switzerland,
Diogenes;
Italy, Frassinelli;
France, Calmann-Levy;
Holland, Vassallucci;
Norway, Aschehoug;
Greece, Kedros;
Portugal, Difel S.A.;
Spain, Emece;
Bulgaria, Lik;
Turkey, Illetsim,
Slovak Republik, Slovart;
Israel, Am Oved

A poignant, funny tale by Israel’s most beloved storyteller. Zaydeh, whose mother died while he was a teenager, is looking for his father, whom he knows is one of three possible men in the village. During four meals he shares with them, he discovers his mother’s innermost secrets, and learns about love, life, and loss.

The Loves of Judith is about to be published in Portugal, but I’m sending you the English version. This is our most successful book we have ever represented. The movie is about to go into production by Colorado, a fabulous Italian movie company that won the Oscar several years ago for Mediteranean as best foreign film. I am sending you the Portuguese editions of his two other brilliant books that I love so much. Please read Shalev’s entries in the Author’s Guide and you will understand better who he is. All Brazilian rights are available. – Deborah Harris, Harris/Elon Literary Agency

Book Description
The extraordinary story of three men in the Jezreel Valley and their love for Judith and her son, whom each man participates in raising as his own. When Judith arrives in a small, agricultural village in Palestine after World War II, she is the center of everyone’s attention--especially Moshe, a widowed farmer obsessed with his dead wife and his lost braid of hair, which his mother cut off in childhood; Globerman, a coarse cattle dealer who loves women, money, and meat; and Jacob, a farmer who gives up his wife, the most beautiful woman in the village, to turn his energies toward raising canaries and wooing Judith with all his might. For ten years the three men strive to win Judith’s exclusive love, but she will not agree to marry any one of them. In her eleventh year in the village she gives birth to a son named Zayde, who looks like all three men. All three consider him their son, and all three participate in raising him. Judith finally marries Moshe, but within a few weeks she is killed under a tree that collapses during a snowstorm. This extraordinary quasi-mythological tale is told many years later by an adult Zayde, as he learns the details of his mother’s life over meals elaborately prepared for him by Jacob. A universal story of love and destiny, "The Loves of Judith" masterfully combines classic Israeli characters with magic realism, as cows, canaries, and crows all act as emissaries of fate, along with a homosexual Italian prisoner-of-war who knows all there is to know about love.

His latest novel, The Loves of Judith, is an "hommage to love".
The Loves of Judith, also published under the title Four Meals, is a novel that reads like a Chagall painting. The mystical qualities of the characters make the novel a visual reading experience. One can’t help getting caught up in the dreamlike state of life in Kfar David, a farming village. While the reader follows the story of Zayde’s quest to understand more about his deceased mother, he spends time with his fathers, three men from the village who claim parentage. Zayde’s mother Judith named him "grandfather" to help ward off the angel of death. Her logic being that whenever the angel of death would encounter a child named Zayde, he’d understand there was a mistake and move on to someone else. With a mother leaving a legacy like that, Zayde manages to discover and uncover some of the mysteries his mother left behind upon her death. The rich descriptions together with the mythic quality of the language leave the reader wanting to visit the village and see how life continued where the story left off.

Quotes and Reviews:
“...this is a heartwarming narrative agleam with moments of plangent sadness, rueful humor and compassionate insight.” Publisher’s Weekly

“...a marvelous and beguiling story. Full of light and color, the light unfolds like a flower with a captivating scent.” Booklist

“...it is as though the Song of Solomon had been rewritten by Gabriel Garcia Marquez....you get a masterclass in the storyteller’s art.” Daily Telegraph

“...Shalev’s version of Eden....the language has a sumptuous and earthy feel.” Times Literary Supplement

“...the novel sparkles with fascinating characters. ...To anyone the least bit familiar with the rueful wit of Jewish humor, seen in works from the Marx Brothers to Woody Allen, it sounds both comfortingly familiar and full of expectation.” The Times

Amazon.com
On a precarious frame--three men contending for the love of one resolutely perplexing woman--Meir Shalev arrays a tale so bittersweet and lyrical that it’s nearly possible to overlook a stunning bit of sleight of hand: in an unabashed love story, the romance becomes tangential. For The Loves of Judith is, ultimately, an hommage to love itself--its elusiveness, its pain, and, above all, its endurance.
During the pause between world wars, Judith, the woman in question, arrives in a small Palestinian village to tend house for Moshe Rabinovitch, a widowed farmer. Confused by her past waywardness, Judith chooses to live in Moshe’s cowshed, cries at night for the daughter she’s lost, and finds herself adored not only by the stoically formidable Moshe but also by a randy and conniving cattle dealer named Globerman and the garrulous canary breeder Jacob Sheinfeld. "Man makes plans and God laughs," Globerman explains, and as the three men clumsily scheme to win Judith’s love, she remains imperturbable, the still point at the center of their longings. Most desperate of all is Sheinfeld, who cares little that his unconcealed love has made him a fool before the entire village. He seeks only "the eternal picture of love," and finds consolation in a life seasoned with consuming desire.

The story is resolved slowly by Judith’s son Zayde, who may be the child of any of the three men--or, remarkably, all three. And so the men raise him, care for him, love him. Over several years, Jacob discloses very nearly all the details of Judith’s world to Zayde. "What did you think, that I told you everything?" Jacob finally asks. Like love itself, the story fulfills because it has the grace not to overwhelm. --Ben Guterson

From the Publisher
When Judith arrives in a small agricultural village in Palestine after World War II, she is the center of everyone’s attention - especially Moshe, a widowed farmer obsessed with his dead wife and his lost braid of hair, which his mother cut off in childhood; Globerman, a coarse cattle dealer who loves women, money, and meat; and Jacob, a farmer who gives up his wife, the most beautiful woman in the village, to turn his energies toward raising canaries and wooing Judith with all his might. For ten years the three men strive to win Judith’s exclusive love, but she will not agree to marry any one of them. In her eleventh year in the village she gives birth to a son named Zayde who looks like all three men. All three consider him their son, and all three participate in raising him. This extraordinary quasi-mythological tale is told many years later by an adult Zayde, as he learns the details of his mother’s life over meals elaborately prepared for him by Jacob.

From The Critics Jennifer Sperry - ForeWord Magazine
Shalev has composed a story that moves with the awesome and natural authority of a river. A master of his craft, Shalev spins words into swirling eddies, lulls sentences past grassy embankments and hurls entire chapters over thunderous waterfalls.... The Loves of Judith is an exquisite novel that measurees its time with the phases of the moon, of the seasons, of birth and of death. It is a woman’s story and a man’s story, and is recommended to anyone who loves literature.

Publisher’s Weekly
"A mensh trakht un Gott lakht." This Yiddish expression meaning "man plans and God laughs" appears more than once in Shalev’s appealing third novel, in which mythic storytelling lucidly elaborates on the workings of love and fate. Zayde, the narrator, grows up in Israel’s Jezreel Valley in the 1940s and ’50s, confused but protected by a name that signifies "grandfather." His mother, Judith, reasons that if "the Angel of Death comes and sees a little boy named Zayde (Grandfather), he understands right away that there’s a mistake here and he goes to someplace else." But while Judith’s attempt to trick Fate saves the life of her illegitimate son many times, it helps lead to her own demise. Her story, and those of the three men who love her, each claiming Zayde as his son, are revealed during four ornate meals prepared for Zayde by one of his "fathers," Jacob Sheinfeld. Twelve-year-old Zayde first visits Jacob almost two years after his mother’s death. He returns three times over the next 29 years to let his memories intertwine with Jacob’s. The tales of those who have loved Judith are epic. Oxlike Moshe Rabinovitch, briefly married to Judith after the death of his wife, still searches for his blonde braid cut off at adolescence and hidden by his mother. Sheinfeld is taught to dance, cook and sew in preparation for a wedding Fate cannot destroy (but does). Only Globerman, Zayde’s third "father," a shrewd cattle dealer, is earthbound, but the unique legacies all three fathers leave their shared son seal the unwieldy family’s destiny. Told in a euphonic voice and employing the magic conventions of a fairytale, this is a heartwarming narrative agleam with moments of plangent sadness, rueful humor and compassionate insight.

Library Journal
Shalev is a gifted Israeli author of books for children and adults (My Father Always Embarrasses Me). In this mesmerizing novel, a man whose names means grandfather (Zayde) in Hebrew shares the stories of the three men who are his father. Jacob Sheinfeld is a farmer who forsakes his beautiful wife, Rebecca, to raise canaries and pursue Judith. Moshe Rabinovitch is a widowed farmer who is obsessed with his dead wife, his lost childhood braid, and Judith. A cattle dealer, Globerman, whom everyone loves and hates at the same time, is also in love with Judith. The relationships among these three men, Judith, son Zayde, and their fellow villagers and the animals they tend are magical, mythical, and wonderful. -- Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial Public Library, Ohio

Kirkus Reviews
Shalev’s third English translation (Esau) is set in post-WWII Palestine. Here, the author’s usual village legend-spinning turns out to be half stuffing and half roast goose. Illegitimate young Zayde Rabinovitch has three alleged fathers-and each contributes something or other to the boy’s physical appearance. Widower Moshe Rabinovitch, who was reared by his mother as a yellow-haired girl until he was 12 and nature could no longer be denied, provided Zayde with those blond tresses (and later with a farm); Jacob Sheinfeld, who once raised canaries-and who was abandoned by his beautiful wife Rebecca because of his infatuated pursuit of Zayde’s single mother, Judith-gave him droopy shoulders, a fine house richly furnished, and empty birdcages; and cattle-dealer Globerman, as coarse and sensual as Fyodor Karamazov, bestowed upon him huge feet and plenty of money. Zayde, who suffers under his name partly because it means "grandfather," is born to Judith in her 11th year of living alone, her ex-soldier husband having deserted her and fled to America. Each of Zayde’s three would-be male progenitors declares himself to be the child’s actual father. The high point arrives with the appearance of an Italian ghost whose wondrous ability to imitate human forms, voices, and actions seems to be leading to a fulfilling end (which may reveal Zayde’s physical parentage)....The story, as retold to or by Zayde during the course of four meals from the hand of Jacob over three decades, gasps with incidental lore and pithy sayings, which may or may not fit the plot but which dash hopes that Shalev will ever come to grips with his tale. Even so, the village mythologizing and the proverbs ("He couldn’tsay the names of wine, but his frying pan laughed and his knife danced in his hand") will warm the hearts of many.





About the author:
Meir Shalev was born in 1948 on Nahalal, Israel’s first moshav and is one of Israel’s most celebrated novelists. His books have been translated into over 20 languages and have been bestsellers in Israel, Holland and Germany. In 1999 the author has been awarded the Juliet Club Prize (Italy). Meir Shalev is also a columnist with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. He lives in Jerusalem and in the north of Israel with his wife and children, where he is a motorcycle and jeep enthusiast.
Meir Shalev was born in Nahalal, in the Galilee. He studied psychology, worked as an ambulance driver and a journalist and is currently a columnist for "Yediot Achronot," a leading Israeli newspaper, as well as a television and radio moderator. Shalev is the author of two novels, "The Blue Mountain" and "Esau," which was a bestseller in Israel, several books of criticism and many children’s books. His work has been translated into several languages. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two children. When he is not writing, Shalev is an avid off-road racing enthusiast and can be found test racing motorcycles and dune buggies across deserts from Israel to Kenya.