Abel Gagin’s Magic Touch

This is a book written with a great deal of love for Jerusalem`s characters and neighborhoods in the 1950s and 60s. Its colorful cabaret has a cast of unforgettable types who dance non-stop in the author`s mind – a buxom waitress, vindictive tax officials, happy bachelors, big-hearted drunks, sly chess players, weeping widows, self-sacrificing mothers, irritable fathers, are all players in this side-splitting comedy.
And the figure of Abel Gagin keeps popping up. He looks like a British intellectual and – unfortunately for those around him – he genuinely believes that he can help lovers on the rocks, or iron out complex family imbroglios and resolve all kinds of other woes.

But each time that Abel tries to fix something, an unexpected twist fouls up his plan and brings disaster to those involved. Dankner has the ability, in a few lines, to create a complete personality that captures our imagination and makes us read on in eager anticipation. His Jerusalem is a sparkling world of magic realism, with vivid human types that are both touching and entertaining, real and imagined, full of charm and invention.