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- Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
- Publisher: Schocken
- On Sale: October 16, 2007
- Price: $25.00
- ISBN: 978-0-8052-4251-5 (0-8052-4251-1)
about this book
From the internationally acclaimed Israeli writer Meir Shalev comes a mesmerizing novel of two love stories, separated by half a century but connected by one enchanting act of devotion.
During the 1948 War of Independence—a time when pigeons are still used to deliver battlefield messages—a gifted young pigeon handler is mortally wounded. In the moments before his death, he dispatches one last pigeon. The bird is carrying his extraordinary gift to the girl he has loved since adolescence. Intertwined with this story is the contemporary tale of Yair Mendelsohn, who has his own legacy from the 1948 war. Yair is a tour guide specializing in bird-watching trips who, in middle age, falls in love again with a childhood girlfriend. His growing passion for her, along with a gift from his mother on her deathbed, becomes the key to a life he thought no longer possible.
Unforgettable in both its particulars and its sweep, A Pigeon and A Boy is a tale of lovers then and now—of how deeply we love, of what home is, and why we, like pigeons trained to fly in one direction only, must eventually return to it. In a voice that is at once playful, wise, and altogether beguiling, Meir Shalev tells a story as universal as war and as intimate as a winged declaration of love.
"[A] stunning tale... This gem of a story about the power of love, which won Israel's Brenner Prize, brims with luminous originality."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An excellent book [that]touches and breaks your heart and leaves you deep in thought about what was and what could have been."
—Hatzofeh (Tel Aviv)
Praise for Meir Shalev's Previous Work
"Shalev creates a world that has the richness of invention and obsessiveness of dreams. He delivers both startling imagery and passionate, original characters whose destinies we follow through love, loss, laughter, and death."
—The New York Times Book Review
"It is as though the Song of Solomon had been rewritten by Gabriel Garcia Marquez... You get a master class in the storyteller's art."
—The Daily Telegraph (London)
