Queen of the Jews

by N.L. Herzenberg

In contemporary New York City, a Jewish woman falls in love with a Palestinian wall painter who has been charged with killing her.
Galia, a Russian Jew living in New York, has no idea that the man she’s drawn to, Alejandro (not his real name), isn’t Mexican at all, but is actually a Palestinian who carries out the wishes of his Mastermind, ostensibly a college professor. Where she sees a passionate, hard-to-reach riddle of a man, he sees a woman who is swept up in a global conspiracy to undermine Palestinian claims to Jerusalem—all because of a book she posted online about the ancient Hasmonean dynasty. But as they draw closer, Alejandro begins to question his assignment, putting them both in grave danger.

"Very original. A monumental work of vibrant imagination."
--Moris Farhi,Turkish author, vice-president of International PEN since 2001

"This rich...novel works on many levels, and it is impossible to label it, to define it by genre. It is both a love story, a philosophical novel, a historical novel, a surreal fable, a meditation on the absurdity of extremism, an allegory of our condition, and a mystery. In a nutshell, it is an original and beautiful novel."
--Dmitry Borshch

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 22, 2015

Reviews

[Philip Dodd · Rating 5 out of 5]

When reading a book, it is always good to know you are safe in the hands of a clever writer. Queen of the Jews by NL Herzenberg is a clever novel by a clever writer. What it is like to be a Jew, what it is like to be a Muslim, more fundamentally, what it is like be a human being, the novel revealed to me. The odd structure of the novel took me a while to get used to, but before I reached its middle, I understood why it was presented the way it was. Rather than simply stating that Galia, one of its main characters, is writing a book called The Hasmonean Chronicle, the chapters set in modern day New York are at times interrupted by a chapter from her book, which reads like a strange combination of ancient Jewish history, Greek mythology, vision and dreams. What it is like to be a writer, having to live in the real world, like everyone else, is one side of the novel I enjoyed. While the extracts from her book, The Hasmonean Chronicle, reveal she has a great command of words, in the real world, she has to listen to Alejandro, a wall painter, who is reluctant at the beginning of their relationship to complete a sentence. It is the relationship between Galia and Alejandro which I found the most interesting part of the novel. I liked that some chapters were presented as written by Galia, others as written by Alejandro, both of them reflecting on their relationship, right up to the novel's dramatic climax. "Love conquers all," wrote Geoffrey Chaucer, and that is the main lesson I got from reading this rich, deep, always interesting book.

[Alta]

Queen of the Jews by NL Herzenberg (Philistine Press, 2016) is a novel written under a pen name, and all we know about the author is that she (he?) is a “widely published American author.” But based on certain qualities, I have a suspicion that the author may not be American born. What qualities am I talking about? I have noticed that most contemporary American writers, and in fact, Western writers in general, have become so entrenched in their identities, that they can no longer create convincing characters, especially when the character is the Other. If the writer is a woman, she may create interesting female characters, but the men look like shadows; if the writer is a man, the interesting characters are male. And if the conflict or intrigue forces us to take sides, you can be sure that female readers will take the side of the woman; the men, on the other hand, will be split, depending on their political allegiance and whether they want to show that they are “allies.” Gone are the days when a male writer could say, “Madame Bovary c’est moi!” But can you even imagine an American female writer say, “Monsieur So-and-So c’est moi!” (I am not saying “Monsieur Bovary” because, frankly, who would want to be him?) I am generalizing, of course, but the trend is obvious.

I began with this parenthesis because Queen of the Jews is one of those rare contemporary novels that depict a love story whose protagonists are very convincing in their contrasting male and female attributes, all the more so since their otherness is enhanced by the fact that the male is Palestinian and the female Jewish-American. The woman, Galia, a writer who is remodeling her home, falls in love with one of the construction workers, Alejandro, whom she believes to be a former marine biologist from Mexico, but turns out to be a Palestinian. And it turns out that this Palestinian refugee--who wants nothing more than to have a normal life by acquiring a coveted green card--has been secretly hired by a pro-Palestinian American professor (the “Mastermind”) who is convinced that Galia, who publishes online excerpts from her Hasmonean Chronicle, wants to undermine the Palestinians’ claim to a homeland. The novel (first published in 2015) is a great workshop in the current Israel-Palestine conflict, or rather, in the response to it of many American intellectuals: while the Palestinian man would like to live a normal life and be left alone, the two Americans, the pro-Palestinian professor and the Jewish woman, have created a fictional character in their minds: for the professor, he is a tool in pursuit of Social Justice; for the woman, he is a mysterious Other, uncultivated like a rough diamond, but a diamond nonetheless.

Structurally, the novel keeps shifting between the present—the contemporary love story of Alejandro and Galia—and the past (the antiquity and the Hasmonean dynasty), moving slowly toward the unexpected climax. Well written and researched, this is a very topical and useful reading for the current times.

[Nina Kossman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The structure of this novel, which is set both in our times and in the ancient world, is somewhat reminiscent of Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita". Recommended.