Forest Dark

National Bestseller

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017

"A brilliant novel. I am full of admiration." —Philip Roth



"One of America’s most important novelists" (New York Times), the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The History of Love, conjures an achingly beautiful and breathtakingly original novel about personal transformation that interweaves the stories of two disparate individuals—an older lawyer and a young novelist—whose transcendental search leads them to the same Israeli desert.

Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, avidity, and outsized personality have, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with, is undergoing a metamorphosis. In the wake of his parents’ deaths, his divorce from his wife of more than thirty years, and his retirement from the New York legal firm where he was a partner, he’s felt an irresistible need to give away his possessions, alarming his children and perplexing the executor of his estate. With the last of his wealth, he travels to Israel, with a nebulous plan to do something to honor his parents. In Tel Aviv, he is sidetracked by a charismatic American rabbi planning a reunion for the descendants of King David who insists that Epstein is part of that storied dynastic line. He also meets the rabbi’s beautiful daughter who convinces Epstein to become involved in her own project—a film about the life of David being shot in the desert—with life-changing consequences.

But Epstein isn’t the only seeker embarking on a metaphysical journey that dissolves his sense of self, place, and history. Leaving her family in Brooklyn, a young, well-known novelist arrives at the Tel Aviv Hilton where she has stayed every year since birth. Troubled by writer’s block and a failing marriage, she hopes that the hotel can unlock a dimension of reality—and her own perception of life—that has been closed off to her. But when she meets a retired literature professor who proposes a project she can’t turn down, she’s drawn into a mystery that alters her life in ways she could never have imagined.

Bursting with life and humor, Forest Dark is a profound, mesmerizing novel of metamorphosis and self-realization—of looking beyond all that is visible towards the infinite.

Best BestsellerA Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017 "Un roman stralucit. Sunt plin de admiratie." —Philip Roth „Unul dintre cei mai importanti romancieri ai Americii” (New York Times), autorul premiat al New York Times, cel mai bine vandut, The History of Love, evoca un roman extrem de frumos si uluitor de original despre transformarea personala care impleteste povestile a doi indivizi dispariti - un avocat mai in varsta si un tanar romancier - a caror cautare transcendentala ii duce in acelasi desert israelian. Jules Epstein, un om al carui impuls, aviditate si personalitate supradimensionata au fost, timp de saizeci si opt de ani, o forta de care trebuie sa se tina cont. , sufera o metamorfoza.