Description

In the Lebanese village of Bhamdoun in 1931, Joseph Friedmann is born to a 15-year-old Syrian-Jewish girl hastily married off to a Belgian businessman thirty years her senior. After his parents divorce, Joseph’s new Christian step-father refuses to rear a Jewish child. At the age of eight, Joseph is banished to a Catholic convent, where he experiences betrayal, anti-Semitism, and a deep trauma he cannot bring himself to name. He learns to survive by locking away his feelings. But at the age of fifteen, he allows himself to fall in love with Isabella, a nun-in-training. This, too, ends in heartbreak. She leaves the convent, taking with her Joseph’s unborn child and his hopes of ever belonging in Lebanon.

Joseph sets out on foot toward Palestine, where he takes part in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. He is finally home. But his new country needs his unique set of skills, and Joseph returns to Lebanon as an Israeli spy. Over time, the tools of his trade – daring, violence, deceit, and suppression of self – exact an ever-increasing toll. After twenty years under cover, he completes one final, decisive operation. Now he faces a choice: escape to safety in Israel, or attempt to lay claim to his future by confronting the past – the mother who forsook him; the abbess who abused him; the lover who deserted him.