Tammuz, B: Minotaur

On the day of his forty-first birthday, an Israeli secret agent encounters a beautiful young English woman. In his overburdened mind, she is the woman he has been searching for all his life, the one he has loved forever. Though they have never met, he is certain that she is an essential part of his life's destiny. Using all tricks of his trade and his network of contacts, he takes control of her existence without ever revealing his identity. Alexander Abramov's desperate, dangerous love for a woman half his age consumes everything in its path: time, distance, and rival suitors. Only his own story, of a life conditioned by isolation, distrust, and murder, can explain his devastating manipulation of the woman he professes to love. Four lives are entwined in this intricate story of a solitary man driven from one side of Europe to the other by his obsession. Riveting and full of suspense, as in the best spy-story tradition, Minotaur is also a highly inventive and original literary novel. Tammuz is a skilled writer whose commanding style makes of Alexander Abramov's story a moving allegory of every man's search for love.