> HISTORICAL FICTION: LINDA DIEBEL
ONE NIGHT, MARKOVITCH By Ayelet Gundar-Goshen House of Anansi, 384 pages, $22.95
In her dazzling debut novel One Night,
Markovitch, Israeli writer Ayelet Gundar-Goshen tells a story of love, longing and human frailty set against the birth of Israel. Her voice soars into magic realism with scenes evoking both Mel Brooks and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
As in life, momentous events often happen by accident. One Night, Mar
kovitch is proof that when character trumps politics, both become unforgettable. On the eve of the Second World War in northern Palestine, Zeev Feinberg sleeps with the butcher’s wife and must run for his life from her knifewielding husband. With his friend Yaacov Markovitch, he boards a ship to Nazi Europe to wed Jewish women and smuggle them into Palestine.
These arranged marriages are slated to end in divorce. But when “gloriously average” Markovitch finds himself wed to the beautiful Bella Zeigerman, a woman so stunning the smitten captain steers the ship in the wrong direction for two days, he won’t hear of divorce. His obsession affects everyone as he struggles to make her love him.
Gundar-Goshen, a newspaper editor, screenwriter and masterful author at 32, writes with supreme confidence and a comic touch that ranges from slapstick to sly humour. The honesty of her characters shows why comedy can be the perfect vehicle for tragedy.
Gundar-Goshen won the Sapir Prize Debut Fiction for One Night, translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston. Her highly anticipated second book,
Walking Lions, has yet to be translated.
THE HOLY LANCE By Andrew Latham Knox Robinson, 300 pages, $27.99
If you’re a fan of the Crusades, medieval warfare or the order of the Knights-Templar, then Andrew Latham’s The
Holy Lance is the book for you. Covering a summer campaign in 1191, the action-packed story describes efforts by a band of Knights Templar and their leader Michael Fitz Alan to save the Third Crusade from defeat by a Saracen army. The adventure takes an intriguing turn when King Richard the Lionheart orders the warrior-monk to accept a special mission.
His life-or-death task — to retrieve the “Spear of Longinus,” the holy relic believed to have pierced Christ on the cross — is dangerous because of enemies and a traitor in his own ranks. Latham takes the reader into battle where one can almost hear spears crunching chain mail and horses and men colliding.
In our era, the word “crusade” has taken on a negative connotation, especially after being evoked by former president George W. Bush after 9/11 to describe his “war on terror.”
Latham’s book is a valuable tool to understanding the roots of early Christian military campaigns to capture Jerusalem.
In an historical note to this first book in a series, Latham acknowledges the complexities of conflicts and alliances of convenience in what is now known as the Middle East. He accurately points out that Christians fought Christians, Muslims fought Muslims and both sides had shifting allies.
Latham was born in England, raised in Toronto and teaches international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn. His background is in historical non-fiction, including the recent: Theorizing Medieval Geopolitics: War and World Order in the Age of the Crusaders.
Although his research can be overwhelming at times, Latham should easily develop a smoother style for his fiction. He has all the makings of great adventure in the English Templar series. As he writes: “Think about it . . . On the one hand, Templars, like all medieval knights were warriors, bred to be brutal and merciless killers. On the other they were pious monks . . . how was that possible?”
That’s the question he tries to answer.
Linda Diebel is a journalist and non-fiction
author.