Andalusian in Jerusalem

by Mois Benarroch, Mois Benarroch

New novel by Mois Benarroch, author of the bestselling books Gates to Tangier and The Expelled, about the Jerusalem Syndrome, the strange delusions that grip tourists in that city. Back in Spain, a schoolboy decides to reveal a false secret to his closest friend and declares he is a Jew. To his surprise his friend reacts with “I knew it!” as if this was the best-known secret in the world. In a matter of hours the whole school calls him the Jew. No denial or acceptance that he told a lie will change his nickname. This fib will lead him to be a respected writer, till he finally writes a historical novel about the Jews. This novel is his first to be translated and to his surprise it is translated into Hebrew. The novel gets him invited to a strange writer’s festival in Jerusalem, where he meets an old woman who looks like his recently deceased mother, and she is convinced that he is her long-lost son, who disappeared several years earlier during the Lebanon War. He will also meet Charly, a Jewish-Moroccan-Israeli writer suffering from chronic discrimination as a Sephardi, who is taking his first steps in writing a novel about Lucena in Spanish, his mother tongue, which he has half forgotten in order to write in Hebrew. Jerusalem is at the center of Andalusian in Jerusalem, a short but intense novel where Madrid meets Jerusalem and the Jewish world becomes more fantastic than the novels of the writers who try to describe it. The Jewish past of Spain leads to Jerusalem, and Spanish is at the heart of the Jewish world.

172 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2014

About the author

Mois Benarroch is one of the most enigmatic figures in today's world literature. Born in Morocco, his writings are rooted in the country's landscapes and history; as a Sephardi Jew he travels the world of Jewish literature; and as in Israeli living in Jerusalem he incorporates the day to day life and politics of his country. A prolific novelist and poet who writes in three languages he never sets for one secure path and is always exploring new ways to make his literature a fresh one with a long time vision.
His poetry is one of compassion, social-political fight, and human. Multicultural by force, where others take multiculturalism as an idea, his life is forced to live within cultures. His novels take us from literary travel, to science-fiction, time travel back and forth, and a view that encompasses the past and the future, the relationships between Jews and Muslims, the life within cultures and the tragic fate of Christian-Jewish relations, always living a place for hope a belief in better days to come.

Known mainly as a poet in the English language world, thanks to a massive support from independent writers many of his novels are seeing light in English. Gates to Tangier, The Cathedral, Muriel, the Nobel Prize, Lucena, Raque Says (Something Entirely Unexpected), have been published in 2015 and many more are on their way in the next year.

A best-selling novelist in Spain, an award winning poet in Israel, and often featured in the bestselling list of poetry books sold in amazon, now is the time to discover this old new writer with more than 30 books to his name.

Mois Benarroch was born in 1959, and has been awarded with the prestigious Amichay poetry prize in 2012.



"GATES TO TANGIER/EN LAS PUERTAS DE TÁNGER is not primarily a critique of the marginalization of the Sephardim in Israel, but rather an exploration of the Moroccan component of Sephardic identity. The Benzimra's pilgrimage to Tangiers, however is not suggesting that this Moroccan component is the essence of Sephardic identity. Benarroch follows Khatibi's bilingual paradigm in suggesting that identity is expressed in the intersection of languages. At one point in the novel, Alberto reflects on the significance of his own bilingual écriture... Unlike Bendahan, who translates Sephardic identity as ultimately European, the Sephardic communities are after all "embajadas españolas" Benarroch explores the Moroccaness of Sephardic identity as it is rearticulated, deferred, by Spanish and Hebrew... The search for the missing brother represents the promise of a stable identity, a mirage that in EN EN LAS PUERTAS DE TÁNGER is constantly metamorphosing. Toward the end of the novel, we find out Yusuf was injured during his circumcision and the doctors decided to treat him with hormones transforming him into Zohra Elbaz. While in Tangiers, Zohra runs into Fortu/Messod and they spend the night together at fortu-Messod's hotel. Benarroch has Zohra run into not one, not two, but three Benzimra men."
Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo. Memories of the Maghreb: Transnational Identities in Spanish Cultural Production,




Mois Benarroch nació en Tetuán, Marruecos en 1959. A los trece años emigra con sus padres a Israel y desde entonces vive en Jerusalén. Empieza a escribir poesía a los quince años, en inglés, después en hebreo, y finalmente en su lengua materna, el castellano. Publica sus primeros poemas en 1979. En los años 80 forma parte de varios grupos de vanguardia y edita la revista Marot. Su primer libro en hebreo aparece en 1994, titulado "Coplas del inmigrante". Publica también dos libros de cuentos, varios libros de poemas en Hebreo , Inglés y Español, y cuatro novelas. En el 2008 es galardonado con el premio del primer ministro en Israel.
En España ha publicado el poemario "Esquina en Tetuán" (Esquío, 2000) y en 2005 la novela "Lucena" (Lf ediciones). En el 2008 la editorial Destino publica la novela "En Las Puertas De Tánger"que llegó al TOP5 en Kindle Espa

Reviews

[Aakanksha Jain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst read ever. :(
PS- Free copy in exchange for honest review.

[Sharron · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is about an author from Spain in Jerusalem and other writers he interacts with are from all over the world. The book had a translator and an editor, but grammar was a huge problem. Some of it was also because the narrator would ramble nervously in conversation and there were literally no sentences. Then a big section of the book was him reading another author's material and there was weird capitalization going on through all that. That is not an issue of it being translated from Hebrew. That section is also strange and it was a welcome relief when I finally got back to the real story and characters that I at least connected with a little bit.

[Paul Roman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally, I have some notion of the difference between Sephardim and Ashkenazim by reading this poetically mysterious book. I would have rated it even higher should the explanations I seek appeared sooner than after the first third of the narrative.

[Edith Soosaar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Andalusian in Jerusalem by Mois Benarroch is a story of a Spanish author who goes to Jerusalem for a conference and is swept away by the 'Israel Madness'. When he is invited to a writers’ conference in Israel strange and surrealistic events start happening. He gets wrapped in his personal version of the Madness.
As his friend tells him: "Madness is the normal thing here, so take it easy. That’s why Israeli prose is so bad, because the reality is more fantastical than the novel one might write, and it’s so incredible that if you put it into a novel nobody believes it."

This book could interest readers with an interest in history and Jewish culture. The writing style could appeal to people who enjoy Kafka’s surrealistic way of telling the stories.

Read my full review in Online Book Club https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/vie...

PS- Free copy in exchange for honest review.