Nadav

In a large hospital in Manhattan, a father – the author of this book – spends forty days and forty nights at the bedside of his son, Nadav. As the weeks succeed each other, the final stages of the life of this young man of thirty-six, a father of three, gradually take place because of a lymphoma that fatally complicated a congenital ailment. Already mourning the loss of his son Ran, Nadav’s older brother, twelve years earlier to the same medical problems, their father, caught in the throes of a downward spiral, foresees this second imminent loss. What the author offers us here is a father’s intense, poignant narrative as he doggedly begs for the salvation of a son who died in the serenity of his faith in invocations, prayers and supplications. This book is an offering to Nadav and his wife and children, a relic adrift among the waters of the abyssal, all-consuming deeps.
Yehuda Lancry holds a PHD in French literature and is a specialist on Michel Butor, who was a close acquaintance. He served as Ambassador of the State of Israel to France from 1992 to 1995, and to the United Nations from 1999 to 2002. His previous book was Le Messager meurtri (Albin Michel Editions).