Novel
Himmo, King of Jerusalem
חימו מלך ירושלים
Yoram Kaniuk · 1966
Synopsis
During the siege of Jerusalem in 1948, a former monastery turned military hospital takes in the wounded. Among them is Himmo Perah, who was called the king of Jerusalem in the days when the girls of the city sought him out: an explosion has torn off his arms and legs and left him blind. Hamutal Horowitz, a young volunteer nurse from Tel Aviv, devotes herself to him and becomes attached to him beyond all reason, under the eyes of the other wounded, the doctors and Marco, Himmo's brother.
Context
It is Kaniuk's second book, published by Am Oved. He himself had spent months in combat at the age of eighteen and had come back wounded, with lasting after-effects. Readers recognised in Himmo the second lieutenant Amnon Vigolick, an explosives officer born in Jerusalem, mutilated in the same way at Neve Yaakov in May 1948. The novel appeared in English from Atheneum in 1968 and in French from Stock in 1971. Amos Gutman made a film of it in 1987, with Alona Kimhi in the role of Hamutal, shown in San Francisco, Chicago and Toronto.
Who it is for
A short novel, translated into French. It helps to know that Jerusalem remained besieged for many months during the war of 1948.
Prizes and reception
Compared by critics to Johnny Got His Gun, the novel by Dalton Trumbo; adapted for the screen by Amos Gutman in 1987.
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