The erotic awakening and mental disintegration of an intense young man who leaves home and enters the phantasm of Israel. It's just another boring summer for our teenaged narrator - until Barbra arrives. An Ethiopian Jew, Barbra was brought to Israel at age five, a part of Operation Solomon, and now our narrator's well-intentioned father has brought her, as a teen, to their home for the summer. But Barbra isn't the docile and grateful orphan they expect, and soon our narrator, terrified of her and drawn to her in equal measure, finds himself immersed in compulsive psychosexual games with her, as she binge-drinks and lies to his family. Things go terribly wrong, and Barbra flees. But seven years later, as our narrator is getting his life back on track, with a new girlfriend and a master's degree in Holocaust Studies underway, Barbra shows up at our narrator's house once again, her "spiritual teacher" in tow, and our narrator finds his politics, and his sanity, back in question.

Tamara Faith Berger writes fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. She is the author of Lie With Me and The Way of the Whore (which were collected by Coach House Books as Little Cat), Maidenhead, and Kuntalini. Maidenhead won the 2012 Believer Book Award. Her fifth book, Queen Solomon, was published by Coach House Books in 2018 and was nominated for a Trillium Book Award. She has a BFA in Studio Art from Concordia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She lives and works in Toronto.

Tamara Faith Berger's profile page

“Berger’s prose is entrancing and lacerating; the deeply inquisitive and disturbing story she so commandingly tells is, by turns, hilarious, obscene, horrifying, and tragic as her damaged characters thrash out the paradoxes of Jewish identity; Israel’s standing as both sanctuary and prison; and humankind’s endlessly intricate entanglement with power and pain.” – Donna Seaman, Booklist

"Raw, powerful, political, and compassionate, albeit with sharp elbows."– Amber Sparks