The Only Daughter

Rachele Luzzatto is the only daughter of a Jewish family in northern Italy. Curious and intelligent, she is caught between her interest in religions - her own and others - and her father's violent rejection of them all. A disagreement ensues between them about the part she is given in the school nativity play. At the same time, she discovers that her father is ill; the severity of his illness is only revealed to her very gradually while her teacher, various members of her family and even her rabbi offer her wide-ranging and humane support. A.B. Yehoshua paints a complex, and humorous, picture of conflicting religious identities and historical memory in this tender character study of a young girl at the threshold of adulthood.

Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A.B. Yehoshua was the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories, and several plays and volumes of essays. He won prizes worldwide and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and adapted for film and opera. An outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies, he continued to speak about and search for solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yehoshua died in June 2022, aged 85.