The Tunnel — A.B. Yehoshua / Abraham B. Yehoshua

A “spryly amusing [and] deeply affecting” novel of a Tel Aviv family coping with the sudden mental decline of their beloved husband and father (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

A National Jewish Book Award Finalist

Until recently, Zvi Luria was a healthy man in his seventies, an engineer living in Tel Aviv with his wife, Dina, visiting with their two children whenever possible. Now he is showing signs of early dementia, and his work on the tunnels of the Trans-Israel Highway is no longer possible. To keep his mind sharp, Zvi decides to take a job as the unpaid assistant to Asael Maimoni, a young engineer involved in a secret military project: a road to be built inside the massive Ramon Crater in the northern Negev Desert.

The challenge of the road, however, is compounded by strange circumstances. Living secretly on the proposed route, amid ancient Nabatean ruins, is a Palestinian family under the protection of an enigmatic archaeological preservationist. Zvi rises to the occasion, proposing a tunnel that would not dislodge the family. But when his wife falls sick, circumstances begin to spiral . . .

Wry, wistful, and a tour de force of vital social commentary, this is “a fabulous portrayal of a long marriage . . . a novel so intimate and vivid that past and present and future merge in ways that generate surprise and delight” (The Arts Fuse).

“The Tunnel  -- translated smoothly from the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman -- is about how one couple copes with the initial news that from now on, everything is going to be different.” -- The New York Times Book Review