The first two sentences of A Wall of Light lay out the book’s main events with Melvillian aplomb: “I am Sonya Vronsky, professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University, and this is the story of a day in late August. On this remarkable day I kissed a student, pursued a lover, found my father, and left my brother.”
The novel is the third and final installment of author Edeet Ravel’s Tel Aviv trilogy, which began with the much-lauded Ten Thousand Lovers and was followed by 2004’s Look for Me. It shares many similarities with its predecessors, most markedly its theme of idealized, unrequited love set amidst the political and cultural mayhem of modern Israel, where Ravel herself was born and still spends a good deal of her time as a social activist. Read more…