Book description
Four Meals is the extraordinary story of Zayde, his enigmatic mother
Judith and her three lovers. When Judith arrives in a small, rural
village in Palestine in the early 1930s, three men compete for her
attention: Globerman, the cunning, coarse cattle-dealer who loves women,
money and flesh; Jacob, owner of hundreds of canaries and host to the
four meals which lend the book its narrative structure; and Moshe, a
widowed farmer obsessed with his dead wife and his lost braid of hair
which his mother cut off in childhood. During the four meals, which take
place intermittently over several decades, Zayde slowly comes to
understand why these three men consider him their son and why all three
participate in raising him. This is a literary novel that succeeds in
being neither incomprehensible nor humourless. The author writes with a
light touch and an eye for amusing quirks of character. MEIR SHALEV
lives in Jerusalem, where he is widely known for his work as a TV
presenter and journalist. He is the author of numerous children's books
as well as novels, including the highly acclaimed Esau and Roman Russi.
