Action-adventure, set against the life of Yeshua, the prophet who dared speak against “the way of the world, protected by...
Dekker (Outlaw, 2013, etc.) makes the spiritual real through the fictional Maviah, daughter of Rami bin Malik, Bedu sheikh.
It’s A.D. 30. Maviah has returned from Egypt into her father’s reluctant care. She was born illegitimate, her father’s daughter by a woman from an outcast Bedu tribe; thus, her exile. Now she’s been returned from Egypt because she’s given birth to a baby son “without a suitable husband.” Her father is the Banu Kalb’s great sheikh, but contrary to nomadic traditions, he settled at Dumah in the Northern Arabian desert, allying with his wife’s uncle, Nabataean King Aretas. Now Nashquya, Malik’s wife, dies, her death robbing Maviah of protection and jeopardizing Malik’s power. Aretas gives his support to the Thamud, an aggressive Kalb enemy. Worse, Malik is betrayed by Maliku, his son. As Malik’s overthrown, he dispatches Maviah to Palestine. She’s to convince King Herod to persuade Rome to support the Kalb. Dekker plunges headfirst into this complex scene-setting, thereafter ramping up drama with Maviah’s perilous trek across the desolate Nafud desert. Dekker’s descriptions of the Nafud’s dangers—think Lawrence of Arabia—are powerfully done, as are his portrayals of the perils posed by the clashing customs of Arabs, Jews and Romans in an era when women were property. Dekker’s secondary characters sparkle as well, including the Bedu Judah, a convert to Judaism who’s entranced with Yeshua of Nazareth. A nicely scripted romance develops between Judah and Maviah—“Judah was like water to my heart”—but as Maviah seeks Herod at Sepphoris, she worries she’s “too common to win the favor of a king.” Then she meets Yeshua—“I could not doubt I was looking at more than a mere man.” What follows are machinations at Herod’s court and then pain, imprisonment and swordplay at Aretas’ Petra court, before Dekker offers an ending supporting his announced sequel.
Action-adventure, set against the life of Yeshua, the prophet who dared speak against “the way of the world, protected by position and sword and gold and knowledge.”Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59995-418-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Center Street/Hachette
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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