Unto the Soul

the long version

Amalia and Gad, sister and brother, have been bequeathed a terrible honor: to be caretakers of a cemetery of Jewish martyrs set on an isolated mountaintop in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe. The siblings accept this daunting privilege only to battle their fierce loneliness, wavering piety, and a burgeoning lust they feel for each other. In Unto the Soul, Aharon Appelfeld once again explores the sustenance of faith in the wake of tremulous guilt and an ambiguous God. As in his other internationally acclaimed novels, Appelfeld's spiritual themes, spare and elegant prose, and haunting characterizations combine to create fiction of the highest order. Unto the Soul is the work of a master, an author concerned not only with the spirituality of Judaism, but with the everyday survival of Jews in a hostile world. To read Aharon Appelfeld is to join a solemn quest for introspection and understanding.