This 1994 Israeli novel has something in common with all the other Israeli novels I have read lately. It has a melancholy tone and a touch of magic realism.Originally written in Hebrew and set in what is now Israel, the story starts at the end of the First World War and gives the reader a picture of a small Jewish village which was not unlike stories I've read about villages in Europe around that time in history except that the weather, the foliage and the crops were all indigenous to Palestine (which was what the area was called at the time).This is the story of a boy named Zayde and his three fathers. Yes, three fathers. Of course the story takes place years before DNA testing and each one of three men believes that he could have been Zayde's biological father. His mother, Judith, had come to the village after a tragedy of her own, and worked as a housekeeper for a widower named Moshe and his children. She refused to sleep in his house however, and lived in the cowshed with the cows. Moshe loved her and so did two other men - Globerman, the rough and unscrupulous cattle dealer and Jacob, the gentle dreamer who over the course of several decades, invited Zayde to his home for four memorable meals and, at the same time, gradually unveiled the secrets around Zayde's birth and Judith's death when Zayde was only ten years old.This is a sad, beautiful and wistful story and I could almost hear the violins playing a minor-keyed rhapsody in the background as it unfolded. Soon, I was caught up in the characters, the concept of the story and the well-planned pacing and very anxious to understand all the mysteries that the author introduced.This is a good book, and a story well told.
