Returning Lost Loves: A Novel

RETURNING LOST LOVES is a kaleidoscope of a story set in and around Tel Aviv. Using a variety of perspectives, Kenaz skillfully takes the reader on a tour of life in Israel today, and does so with an eye-opening honesty and freshness. His shifting camera lens focuses on several protagonists: a beautiful young woman obsessively involved in a torrid affair with a rascal of a married man; a young soldier who has gone awol, thereby torturing his Zionist parents; an old Ashkenazi trying desperately to keep his apartment house free from lower-class, vulgar, Sephardic newcomers who are trying to make over the basement into an apartment for their daughter; a paralyzed elderly man dependent on, and more and more devoted to, his Filipino maid and her violent lover. Kenaz follows these people and their situations through dizzying shifts of attention, but always remains true to life with his own brand of distilled reality, not to mention his ever-present black sense of humor. The scenes accumulate in a curious satisfaction, finally ending in murder and revelation. Kenaz has written his most entertaining and modern novel yet, one that resonates with as much hard truth as hard beauty.

“Returning Lost Loves is a subtle, dark novel about loneliness and obsessions, but at the same time it is a wonderful comedy about the paradoxes of love and the fierceness of jealousy.” — Amos Oz

“Though he has interests in common with Malamud and Appelfeld, he creates a pathos powerfully his own.” — Philip Roth