Bride Price

by Grete Weil, John Barrett (Translator)

Retells the story of Michal, King David's first wife, and interweaves it with the the story of the author's own experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust.

183 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Grete Weil was born in Munich in 1906, the daughter of a Jewish lawyer. When the Nazis came to power, she emigrated to Holland with her husband, the playwright and director Edgar Weil. In 1941, Edgar was arrested; he later died in a concentration camp. Grete went into hiding, and it was then that she began to write, first theater pieces, then fiction. After the war, she returned to Germany, and eventually settled near her native Munich, where she lived from 1947 until her death, at age 93, in 1996. She was the author of five novels, a memoir, and several collections of short fiction. The German original of Aftershocks was first published in Zurich in 1992.

Reviews

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A re-examination of an Old Testament story that makes you think--about the violence of the Christian mythology and the fact that the people on the periphery suffered hard lives made harder by what people thought God wanted.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another biblical story, that of David, reimagined from a woman's perspective. A great read, but not a cheery one.