The illuminated soul

the long version

"Drawing on such diverse sources as the anatomy of the vertebrate brain, the Bible and Jewish legends, Japanese pictography and literature, and the ancient languages of the Near East, The Illuminated Soul is an unforgettable novel about the transforming power of beauty and the attendant pains of memory and desire.". "At the outbreak of World War II, when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, Eva Laquedem flees Prague, carrying with her, at great risk, the renowned Augsburg Miscellany - a magnificent fifteenth-century Hebrew illuminated manuscript that has been in her family for generations. After spending the war years in Japan, she travels rootlessly, like the legendary Wandering Jew, until chance brings her to the town of Windsor, Canada, and to the home of Adele Ivri, a devout widow, and her two sons.". "Eva is unlike anyone Adele and her two sons have ever met. Her rare beauty, the dazzling tales she tells them - of her travels, of wondrous places and creatures, even of the dangers she faced during the war - change their lives, as do the exquisite illuminations contained within the pages of the Miscellany. The two boys, Joseph and Asa, fall in love with Eva, and as Joseph recounts the story and his love for her, and the past begins to intrude upon the present, he finally reveals the novel's secrets, the darkness to which we are all subject."--BOOK JACKET.