A Room

Rarely does a new book become a literary event, critically acclaimed as a classic on publication. Shimoni’s work has already been described by the literary experts as one of the finest Hebrew works of all times. The novel is composed of three independent parts that meld to a single entity. In the first part, eight soldiers are preparing a training film at an Israel Defense Force’s base, and the plot explores the consciousness of the different participants. This creates an ironic gap between their silly collective project and life story each individual soldier bears, a life story heavy with painful experiences of indignities and sorrow, missed opportunities and humiliations. The film-making is interrupted by tragedy: someone is burnt alive, and a homicide detective, an Israeli version of the lonely, lackluster investigator, is sent to the army base to investigate the case. In the second part of the work, which takes place in Paris, an art student tries to create a variation on Mantegna’s famous painting of the dead Jesus.

He finds three mendicants in the street who become models for Jesus and two mourners for his painting. He sneaks into a Parisian morgue with the paupers. Here also there is a gap between their mindless banter and the student’s tortured soul. The third part of the work is written as a legend about an entire nation that joins forces to construct a monument to the local deity. This mission is bound to fail from the onset, both because of man’s limited capabilities and because of art’s inability to cope with the dimensions of the deity and of the universe. Each part of the novel is written as a Passion, describing the lives of the characters as a journey to the cross embroidered with joy and pain, eros and death and persistent attempts to grasp some happiness.