Hugo’s Earthquake

In this wild and funny novel, a playwright named Itamar Levy has written a play with the same title as the novel. He is active at rehearsals and fills in for the lead actor when the latter gets sick. Hugo, the protagonist of the play, is a 70 something Holocaust survivor, and the action takes place in the Tel Aviv apartment of his neighbor, Rivka. One day, Hugo sneaks into her living room while she is taking a shower, and in a closet he finds an amazing machine that can simulate earthquakes. Hugo activates the machine… and the whole building collapses. However, he survives and finds himself alone with a hand—not his—sticking out of the ruins. He imagines that it is Rivka’s and by the time rescue workers get to the scene, Hugo has established a relationship with it and regaled it with his feats of heroism, including revenge on his caretaker’s Thai boyfriend, and rescuing a young girl from a terrible fire. Itamar the playwright’s feats are no less amazing: he discovers that a dead friend’s body has been replaced by an unknown woman, who is buried instead of him. But only Itamar knows about this. On the other hand, the whole country has read in the press that he tried to murder the lead actor in his play. (In fact, the actor tried to commit suicide and Itamar saved his life.) In the meantime, as Itamar’s involvement in the production grows, Hugo slowly starts to control him. But who does all this happen to? And how is Itamar Levy the playwright connected to Itamar Levy the author of this novel?

A bold book that presents life as a drama of the absurd—and ourselves as actors going around in masks.