Reader’s Companion

A companion for readers and reading groups. Everything on this page is safe to read before you begin, and nothing here gives away what happens.

The theological and legal arguments in the novel are made by its characters, in their own voices. They are not offered as settled teaching of any tradition.

The world of the novel

The war

The war lasts nine days. On the sixth, Israel is struck and destroyed. The enemy is never named. The novel is not concerned with who started the war, but with what people and institutions do in the days after it.

Where Joel is held

Joel is shot down over Jordan, which in the novel was not a party to the war. He is held in Amman, in a building he never sees from outside.

What is asked of him

Christian and Muslim delegations each want one sentence from him — one naming which tradition inherits the faith, the history and the holy places of a vanished people. Everything else in the book follows from that request.

The rest of the world

Chapters set in Joel’s cell alternate with short chapters set in ministries, courtrooms, shipping offices and conference halls — Rome, Riyadh, Washington, Copenhagen, Piraeus. These are headed by the day of the war, and they show decisions being made, often by no one in particular.

How the book is built

Fifty-three chapters in five parts and an epilogue. Each part opens with an epigraph from the notebooks of Ronald C. Orovan, kept in 1989.

Part One: The Sky · Chapters 1–7
Part Two: The Shepherd · Chapters 8–23
Part Three: Doorposts · Chapters 24–33
Part Four: Emet · Chapters 34–44
Part Five: God Will Know · Chapters 45–49
Epilogue: Let Them Rest · Chapters 50–53

Who’s who

As each character first appears. Nothing here tells you what becomes of them.

In the room

Joel: Thirty-eight. An Israeli reserve pilot who sells and services commercial refrigeration. He reasons out loud, counts everything, and has spent most of his life avoiding questions of faith.
Farouk: The guard who brings his food. Heavy, talkative, and the only person in the building who wants nothing from him.

The Christian delegation

Monsignor Reiss: Roman Catholic, sent from Rome to lead the delegation. Courteous, well prepared, and candid about what he wants.
Father Damaskinos: Greek Orthodox. Tall, quiet at first, and inclined to say the thing the others were thinking.
Abouna Tadros: A Coptic priest who joins the delegation in Rome. He says little and writes a great deal down.
Pastor Hollis: An American Protestant, anxious and serious, who does not always agree with the colleagues he travels with.

The Muslim delegation

Sheikh Marwan: Leads the delegation. Small, neat and warm, and unwilling to make a hard thing sound easy.
Yusuf: Younger, a teacher, who rearranges the chairs without being asked.
The old sheikh: An elderly scholar from the conference in Riyadh, who sits through a whole day of it without speaking.

Elsewhere

Archbishop Lenaerts: The Holy See’s senior diplomat in Rome, a pragmatist who is fond of a well-made sentence.
Kirsten Damgaard: A capable Danish civil servant who sets up shelter for her country’s Jews, and keeps a notebook of their names.
Marta: A ministry translator with one ambiguous word to render and a deadline.
Vassilis Karalis: A Greek shipowner with one ship, one cargo and a war-risk premium.

Glossary

Terms from the three traditions, as the novel uses them.

Emet: Hebrew for “truth.” The title of Part Four.
Doorposts / mezuzah: A mezuzah is a small case holding a parchment with verses from Deuteronomy, fixed to the doorpost of a Jewish home. The verses themselves tell the reader to write the words “on the doorposts of your house.”
Shema Yisrael: “Hear, O Israel” — Judaism’s central declaration that God is one.
Talmud: The great body of rabbinic law and argument, compiled in late antiquity. With the commentaries and responsa (rabbis’ written answers to questions of law), it is the literature the novel’s delegations offer to preserve.
Vowel points: Hebrew is written mainly in consonants. The small marks that show the vowels were added to the biblical text by scholars in Tiberias, in the Galilee, many centuries after it was first written.
Yitgadal v’yitkadash: The opening words of the prayer said by Jewish mourners. By tradition it is said only when ten are present.
Kosher: Food prepared according to Jewish dietary law, and the certification mark printed on its packaging.
The Almohads: A North African Muslim dynasty of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under which Jews and Christians in its lands faced forced conversion.
Shahada: The Islamic profession of faith: that there is no god but God, and that Muhammad is His messenger. Said sincerely, it makes the speaker a Muslim.
Qur’an and hadith: The Qur’an is Islam’s scripture. Hadith are the reported sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.
Tahrif: The Islamic teaching that earlier scriptures were altered by human hands over time.
Kasb: “Acquisition”: the theological idea that God creates every human act and the person acquires it, and with it responsibility.
Salaam: “Peace” — the Arabic greeting.
The Trinity: The Christian teaching that God is one, in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Sabellius: A third-century teacher who held that Father, Son and Spirit are three modes of one God, a view the early Church condemned.
Monsignor: An honorary title for a senior Catholic priest.
Abouna: Arabic, “our father”: the title used for a priest in the Coptic and other Eastern churches.
The Holy See / Second Section: The Holy See is the government of the Catholic Church. The Second Section of its Secretariat of State conducts its relations with other states.
Nuncio: The pope’s ambassador to a country.
Designated sites: In the novel, the “temporarily secured accommodation” to which governments move Jewish citizens for their protection.

For discussion

Questions for reading groups, safe at any point in the book.

Joel asks again and again for the Red Cross to be told he is alive. No one ever refuses him. Why might that be worse than a refusal?
Several chapters show harm done with no one deciding to do it — a translator’s deadline, a cabinet meeting, an insurance circular. Which step seemed most reasonable to you as you read it?
The enemy in the war is never named. How did that shape the way you read the book?
Joel thinks like a pilot and a repairman: fuel, compressors, a thermostat that runs wrong. What does his trade let him see that the clergy cannot?
Both delegations are courteous and sincere. Did their sincerity make their offers easier or harder to refuse?
“There was no third pile.” What does it mean to be asked to speak for a tradition you cannot read?
Joel proposes that both faiths share the inheritance, and both refuse, for different reasons. Were you persuaded by either?
Farouk wants nothing from Joel. Why does that matter so much to him?
The book opens with Orovan’s line that when a wolf takes a sheep, people kill the wolf and never blame the shepherd. Who are the shepherds in this story?
“Then circumstance is a thief.” Can circumstance ever give someone the authority to speak for others?

Questions for readers who have finished the book will be added here when it is published.

For how the novel came to be, see the author’s note on its origins.