On the Silk Road by Amnon Shamosh

Amnon Shamosh, who made his name as an author with the well-known family saga “Michel Ezra Safra & Sons” as well as with the dozens of enthralling short stories that appeared in the collections entitled “My Sister the Bride” and “Wheels of the World,” surprises us once again with a novel that is modern, brilliant, and profound.

The story revolves around age-old traditions and historical facts that complement one another, mingling in Shamosh’s imagination and impassioning the reader. In the year 1400, the great conqueror Timur Lang arrives in the Syrian city of Haleb (Aram Zoba) and from it sends ten Jewish families of silk dyers into exile, banishing them to Samarkand, capital of Timur’s empire, on the Silk Road. Timur Lang also kidnaps Jewish virgins, sequestering them in his harems. One of the virgins captures the heart of Timur’s son, a man of intellect and creation, who ruled under him. King Elias, “son of the Jewess,” who was raised in the Islamic faith, embarks on a quest to Spain in an effort to get to know and understand the Christian world as well as the Jewish one, which was flourishing in Spain at the time. Elias, seeking an identity and also a bride, finds them in Haleb, city of his maternal forefathers. His young wife came from the Dayan family, with ties to the dynasty of the House of David.

The novel moves through three story lines. One is situated in the fifteenth century and centers mainly on the royal family and on the harem in Samarkand. The second occurs at the beginning of the twentieth century, in Jerusalem’s Bokharan Quarter, where immigrants from Bokhara and Haleb are crowded together, and the leaders of the new Jewish immigrant society visit the neighborhood. Story line number three concerns the last decade of the century, with the massive immigration of Soviet Jewry; the story here focuses mainly on the Bokharan immigrants. The spotlight is on Oshi Shauloff Ben-Shaul, born in the Bokharan Quarter, whose mother, of Halev origin, is a descendant of the above-mentioned House of Dayan and has roots in one of the families that were exiled from Haleb to Samarkand.

This novel, excitingly erotic yet refined and restrained, has a style that is at once powerful and inspiring – as we have been led to expect from the works of Amnon Shamosh.

Born in Syria in 1929, Amnon Shamosh immigrated to Tel Aviv as a child and later became one of the founding members of Kibbutz Ma'ayan Baruch, where he resides today. A graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, author of both poetry and prose for children and adults, his work has been translated into English, Spanish, and French. Amnon Shamosh is a recipient of the Agnon Prize, named after the celebrated Israeli Nobel Laureate in Literature, the Prime Minister's Prize for Creativity, the President of Israel's Award for Literature, and numerous other literary awards.

288 pages, 14.5X21 cm