The Yemenite Girl

This award-winning novel is “a delightful, inventive tale” about the pursuit of love and literary fame from “a compassionate and witty satirist” (Kirkus Reviews).

It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for middle-aged Ezra Shultish—a chance to the meet his literary hero, Nobel Laureate Bar Nun, a writer Ezra has worshipped for most of his career as a teacher and translator. Hoping to get a recording of the author reading his story, The Yemenite Girl, Shultish travels to Israel, where he finds himself pursuing his own Yemenite girl, as well as the elusive author. But will Ezra get the girl—or his own glimpse of literary fame?

Winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award, The Yemenite Girl is Curt Leviant’s comic novel on the nature of celebrity and the relationship between life and art.

“Shultish is a man with a life of his own. . . . And the celebrity, too, is remarkably drawn. . . . [The book] is done with great tact, feeling, and skill.” —Saul Bellow, Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize for Literature–winning author

“A passionate story . . . The charm of the text and the intensity of the subtext is what keeps the pages turning.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Good comic writing and satire on the Hebrew literary scene with its jealous politicking for literary prizes.” —The Washington Post