The Extra

After her father’s death, a musician must go home to Israel to confront the relationships she left behind in this novel by the author of The Retrospective

Noga, forty-two and divorced, is a harpist with an orchestra in the Netherlands. Upon the sudden death of her father, she is summoned home to Jerusalem by her brother to help make decisions in urgent family and personal matters. Returning also means facing a former husband who left her when she refused him children, but whose passion for her remains even though he is remarried and the father of two. For her imposed three-month residence in Israel, her brother finds her work as an extra in movies, television, and opera. These new identities undermine the firm boundaries of behavior heretofore protected by the music she plays, and Noga, always an extra in someone else’s story, takes charge of the plot. The Extra is Yehoshua at his liveliest storytelling best—a bravura performance.

“Engaging…Yehoshua is a master in his visual sketches of scenes.”—The New York Times Book Review

“[A] finely etched new novel…A marvel of a book.”—Haaretz

“Four and a half decades after his first book’s publication, his twentieth shows Yehoshua’s writing chops are undiminished and his content fearlessly topical.”—New York Journal of Books

“Rich in reflection and personal truth…Masterful.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Award-winning Israeli novelist Yehoshua gives moral force, even grandeur, to the inevitable push-pull of one family’s life.”—Library Journal, starred review