Four Mothers

Shifra Horn's beautifully imagined novel tells the story of five generations of women in one family against the backdrop of one hundred years in Jerusalem. The story begins with the birth of the family's first boy to Amal, the last generation. Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother are overjoyed, because the birth of a healthy boy means that the curse against the women of the family has been broken. They tell Amal the story of those "foremothers": Mazal, the orphan, whose ill-fated marria