Original language:
Hebrew Translated from: Hebrew
Authors: Yehoshua, Abraham B.
Translated by: Gudelytė, Kristina
Full translated source bibliographical description:
Abraham B. Yehoshua. Shlichuto Shel Hamemuneh, Al Meshave Enosh. 2004
ISBN: 978-609-444-184-4
Published in: Vilnius
Published on: 2016
Publisher: Sofoklis
Abraham B. Yehoshua (born in 1936) – he is one of the most prominent Jerusalems writers. His novel “A Woman in Jerusaem” is written about forty years old woman who was killed in a market place during terrorist attack and a man who is working in one of the most popular Jarusalems bakery as human resources management division. He got a task to take a good care of now dead woman’s body. This novel is divided into three parts: ,,The manager”, ,,The Mission” and ,,The Journey”.
One day a director of a country’s well known company got into his hands the article that was planned to be published by the local newspaper. Human resources manager was forced to give up all his plans for the remaining day and show up at directors office so they could be make some desicions about the article. In the article their comany was accused of shocking indifference to the woman which was killed during the terrorist attack that happened in a market place. Even though the woman didn’t have any documents on her proving who she was, a salary paper was found without a person’s name that belonged to their company. That was the reason why their company was the one that got accused for the shocking indifference to the woman who’s body stayed into morgue for a quite long time without anyone searching or trying to regonise it. Eighty seven year old director, trying to protect his immaculate name and fearing that only saying sorry as a responce to the article won’t be enough, gives the manager a task to find out who is the mysterious woman. Also to make sure to find as much as he can information about her. That is how the human resources manager’s adventures started by taking care of the womans body who died in Jerusalem during the terrorist attack.
In the first part of novel called ,,The Manager” the dead woman was identified. The woman was Julia Ragajev who was working as a temporary worker in their bakery. She wasn’t even local, she came from the other country to find happiness in Jerusalem. After finding her written life story accompanied by a picture. The biggest attention is given to beauty that can be seen in that small and not such a good quality picture. It attracts the manager from the first second as he sees the picture. It is mentioned during the whole novel, because the manager always debate how he could have not seen the beauty of the woman when he was employing her and he is trying to find out if others characters in the novel can see the same beauty in the picture as he can see. Also, he sees that he was the one who wrote down her life story before accepting her into the job. Word by word what she said. It makes him wonder even more how he didn\’t saw her special beauty before. Even though in the begging of the book you can see that the manager is tring to get rid of the burden and get everything done as fast as he can, later (from the second part of novel – “The Mission”) her special beauty attracts him even more. Also, he starts to have weird feelings while thinking about her and that makes him take responsabilty of the dead woman and take care of her body until it will be buried in a country that she came from. Because of that he gets into adventurious trip trying to bring back the womans remains to her homeland where her son and mother lives.
Whole novel is written from the two different views. Novel is narrated from the humans resources managers eyes – the first person. There is also some parts where it is told from the third person perspective. Telling by the third person is like trying to show, how everything looked from the other side and what the others who were there at that moment thought about it. Like the people who were the scenes witnesses. It adds more feelings to the novel and helps to better understand all the situations, to get more into the novel.