AT NIGHT'S END

A writer wakes up in a hotel room in an unfamiliar city. His clothes are muddy and he doesn't know how long he's been lying in bed. He came to participate in a literary festival that is long over - why is he still there? When he desperately attempts to reconstruct his lost days, he learns that he told people at the festival that his best friend had died.
Except that his friend is still alive.

This disorienting state launches the story of a profound friendship that begins in childhood and follows the intertwining life paths of two men. Over the decades, their journeys diverge and reconverge, as the imaginary worlds of their early days gradually fade but never vanish.
The protagonist, Yonatan, stays on in Mexico City, resisting the unavoidable return to his wife and infant son back home in Tel Aviv. Faced with the terrifying certainty that his closest friend, Yoel, is going to die, he struggles to preserve his sanity. But why does the impending death - which may or may not in fact happen - frighten him so much that he opts to stay in a foreign country far away from his family? And Why doesn't he believe he can go back to Israel and save his childhood friend?

Taking place in Israel, the events unfold under the constant shadow of military service, animosity between Arabs and Jews, and the societal demand that boys be men. Above all, this is a universal story of family and love, friendship and fatherhood, the savage forces of memory, imagination and writing, and the life one leads after losing a loved one - a life that can still prove exciting and surprising.

ERWACHEN
Deutsch von Ulrike Harnisch
[ HC Hanser 03/2020]