Five Seasons

This tale of an awkward Israeli widower and his misadventures with women is an ';extraordinary novel...a masterpiece' (Los Angeles Times). After seven long years of illness, Molkho's wife passes, leaving him in mourning, but also with an unexpected sense of freedom. No longer is he bound to being a caretaker for a woman too sick to even bear his touch. His futureand his desiresare his own. As the seasons of his life propel the hapless middle-aged accountant through a series of journeys and a string of infatuationswith an unwanted wife, an aggressive bureaucrat, a young girl, and a Russian emigreMolkho begins to find the real element that was missing in his life was not romance, but his own will. An absurd, tragic, humorous, and hopeful meditation on love, marriage, and the quiet struggles of average Israeli lives, Five Seasons ';reconfirms [A. B. Yehoshua's] status as a shrewd analyst of domestic ordeals' (Publishers Weekly).