The Salt Line

Praise for The Salt Line “You have created a vast world. You have created a number of worlds. And for two weeks I have been passing through your worlds and on almost every page new vistas are revealed. Vistas and sounds and smells and tastes as well as threads leading from one world to another page by page. This vast book contains some lofty peaks the likes of which I do not know many … A glorious and mighty book. In a few weeks time I shall return to read it … and I shall restrain myself from commencing a rereading right away … In the meanwhile thank you for this wonder.” – Amos Oz “Few novels such as this have been written in literature in general and in Hebrew literature in particular … The Salt Line is a novel that gives the reader a jolt, both intellectual and emotional. Its importance lies Youval Shimoni The Salt Line Translated by Michael Sharp For Ayelet The author is grateful to the Oxford Centre for Hebrew Studies and to Literarisches Colloquium Berlin for residencies which contributed greatly to the completion of this novel. Part One 1 A gamin lean and gloomy, a tiny Russian in a desert town where his mother’s hats fail to amaze, a remote trading town in which the commotion of passing caravans is cut by muezzins’ calls and the ringing of Chinese gongs and the groans of wandering winds. His clothes are worn out and dirty, and he walks on the roof of the inn between low wicker tables and wicker stools and gathers up all sorts of leftovers and puts them in his pockets, and with the very same agility pours the remnants of drink from bottles and glasses into a small squashed metal flask that he removed from its hiding place in