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The Salt Line
Winner of the Brenner Prize (2015) and the Newman Prize (2016)
"Few novels such as this have been written in literature in general and in Hebrew literature in particular." - The Brenner Prize Committee
In 1904, a wounded Russian Jew turns up in northern India on the run from his pursuers and his own conscience. He doesn't miss anyone - neither his parents nor the pregnant girl he has deserted; his people or his revolutionary comrades. He is cared for by an English doctor who is obsessed with the man who stole his wife from him in Rome, and has devised a scheme to lure his rival, an archeologist, to the region and take revenge on him.
From this dual structure founded on the betrayal of colleagues and family members, two separate plots emerge. In one, we see acts of terrorism against the Tsar and his ministers, and the horrors of pogroms in early 20th century Russia; in the other, a caravan goes into the desert on a private journey of revenge that is both mad and carefully planned.
A hundred years later when the Russian's grandson comes from Israel in order to investigate his grandfather's disappearance, it is not only the family connection that motivates him. Slowly, he approaches the misdeeds his grandfather had been implicated in. But the revelations go further and also touch his own life. What seemed at first to be a story about distant exotic events finally brings the present time and conditions into sharp focus
The Salt Line is a wide-ranging novel that spans several continents, generations, and wars, wherein single moments of decisiveness and hesitation determine the course of future lifetimes and repeat within them, a cycle from which there is no telling whether escape is possible. The characters - Russians, Britons, Israelis and Indians - range from those who believe in an ideal or a god, to those who are entirely faithless; the action ranges from St. Petersburg to a remote district capital in the Indian Himalayas, and from snowy mountains to arid dunes.
The Salt Line is a singular literary achievement, and a masterpiece of contemporary fiction.
Youval Shimoni was born in Jerusalem in 1955. He studied cinema at Tel Aviv University and first began publishing in 1990. Shimoni is a senior editor at the Am Oved Publishing House and has taught creative writing at Tel Aviv, Haifa and Bar Ilan University. He has been awarded the Bernstein Prize (2001), the Prime Minister's Prize (2005) and both the Brenner Prize (2015) and the Newman Prize (2016) for "The Salt Line". In 2018 a two-day international conference on his works was held at the University of Cambridge. South African born Michael Sharp lives in Israel where for many years he produced music programs for Israel Radio. He has translated a non-fiction work and four novels including Youval Shimoni's "A Room".
