Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, avidity, and personality have, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with, is undergoing a metamorphosis. In the wake of his parents' deaths, his divorce from a thirty-year marriage, and his retirement from the New York legal firm where he was a partner, he begins shedding the possessions he spent a lifetime accumulating - a watch here, an Old Master there - and becomes elusive, distant. Resolving to do
something to commemorate his parents, he travels to Tel Aviv and checks into the Hilton.
Meanwhile, a novelist leaves her husband and children behind in Brooklyn and arrives at the same hotel, hoping that the view of the pool she used to dive into on childhood holidays will unlock her writer's block. But when a retired professor of literature recruits her for a project involving Kafka, she is drawn into a mystery that will take her on a metaphysical journey and change her in ways she could never have imagined.
Jules Epstein has vanished from the world. Last seen when a taxi dropped him off in the Judean foothills, Epstein was a man whose outsize personality had, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with.
Five months earlier, in New York, Epstein - following his parents' deaths, his divorce and his retirement - is undergoing a transformation. Feeling an irresistible longing for lightness, he begins to give his possessions away, including his art collection. Travelling to Tel Aviv, Epstein checks into the Hilton with a vague plan to do something in his parents' memory, but is soon side-tracked by an encounter with a rabbi with mystical beliefs.
At the same time, an American novelist in refuge from family life arrives at the Hilton, consumed by the idea that the hotel might be the key to unlocking a dimension of reality previously closed to her. But when a retired professor of literature offers her the task of completing an unfinished script by Franz Kafka, she is drawn into a mystery that will change her in unimaginable ways.
Bursting with life, humour and passion, this is a profound, mesmerizing, achingly beautiful novel of metamorphosis and self-realisation; of looking beyond all that is visible towards the infinite.
Uncommonly intelligent, elegant and thoughtful
