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Simon Mawer
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A Jealous God Hardcover – January 1, 1996

by Simon Mawer (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 4 ratings
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Bored by her marriage with Eric, ambivalent about her children, and ridden with guilt about her aged mother, Helen Harding is at an age when memory begins its slow and pernicious invasion of the present.
Unexpectedly she meets up with her estranged stepbrother Michael and finds herself precipitated back into a past that has long been shut away - a childhood haunted by the mythic figure of her father, who died in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, and a womanhood dominated by her conflicting love for Michael himself and her father's brutal, disturbing friend Dennis Killin.
Helen's quest for the jealous god of the past is set against a shifting backdrop of England, Cyprus, and Israel. With sensitivity and perception the novel explores a woman's life and the forces that act upon it. Who is the father of Helen's daughter? What was her own mother's relationship with Killin? And above all, what really happened to her father in those tormented days when the British Mandate in Palestine drew to a bloody close?
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    319 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Andre Deutsch Ltd
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 1996
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0233989641
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0233989648
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beneath her cool exterior, prim Helen Harding, an English librarian specializing in Biblical studies, is a muddle of conflicting impulses. After a 20-year estrangement, she is conducting an extramarital affair with her stepbrother Michael, resuming the forbidden sex play of their youth. She's riddled with guilt about her senile, doddering mother Lorna, now confined to an old-age home after a long career as a femme fatale. Above all, Helen seeks to unravel the mystery surrounding the death of her father, British intelligence officer Andrew Harding, presumably killed in 1946 in the bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel by Zionist extremists in British-occupied Palestine. Did Major Harding, whose sympathy with the plight of Jewish refugees set him at odds with his callous comrades, actually survive the blast, as Lorna believes? Was he a hero or a traitor? Did Dennis Killin, his cynical, mysterious friend, have an affair with Lorna?and is he the father of Helen's own daughter? Mawer, whose Chimera won the 1989 McKitterick Prize for a first novel, is a poetic, masterful explorer of hidden motives, erotic desires, divided loyalties.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Andre Deutsch Ltd; First Edition (January 1, 1996)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 319 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0233989641
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0233989648
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 0.035 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

About the author

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Simon Mawer

Simon Mawer

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Educated at Millfield School in Somerset and at Brasenose College, Oxford, I took a degree in biology and worked as a biology teacher for many years. My first novel, Chimera, was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1989, winning the McKitterick Prize for first novels. Mendel's Dwarf (1997), reached the last ten of the Booker Prize and was a New York Times "Book to Remember" for 1998. The Gospel of Judas, The Fall (winner of the 2003 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature) and Swimming to Ithaca followed. In 2009 The Glass Room, my tenth book and eighth novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. My 2012 book The Girl Who Fell From The Sky and its sequel Tightrope (2015) both feature the female Special Operations Executive agent Marian Sutro. Tightrope won the 2016 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. In 2018, my eleventh novel, Prague Spring, signalled a return to a Czech setting following both Mendel's Dwarf and The Glass Room; in 2022 my latest novel ANCESTRY, an exploration of fiction and personal history, will be published in both the UK and the US.

I am married, with two children and four grandchildren. My wife and I have lived in Italy for over forty years but now split our time between our home near Rome and a house in England.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
4 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

igor dumbadze
5.0 out of 5 stars ...an amazing piece of writing...
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2020
Verified Purchase
I have now read most of Mawer's books and consider him one of the very best authors in the business of writing books. His writing style allows the words to flow, creating an incredible depth and richness to the events in the plot. His choice of words is equally amazing in contributing to the breadth of the character evolution. His ability to move back and forth in time calls on the reader to pay attention as characters revert to their younger (or older) days. Relationships are not what they seem and conflict resolutions are more complex than one can imagine. Geographic settings provide unforgettable backgrounds to the action of the plot.

I find everyone of Mawer's books creating a dilemma for this reader: I want to read quickly to get at the resolution of the plot, while at the same time, I absolutely hate to read it quickly, because I want to savor every written word!!
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kidney
5.0 out of 5 stars probably the best - i i have read all and hard to ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2018
Verified Purchase
probably the best - i i have read all and hard to choose -since they're all great
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Top reviews from other countries

Mr M Atkinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Love all his books
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 17, 2014
Verified Purchase
Very good characters and the plot gets into it's stride about half way through. Then it has two excellent threads mainly set in Palestine and an excellent ending i did not see coming. One of my favourite authors.
6 people found this helpful
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