It is the 1980’s. Elisha Stern is known as the most important writer of the Shoah. He is soon to accept the Nobel Prize (for peace, not for literature) in Oslo. Blum and Adler, two friends from his youth whom he has not seen since their world was savaged four decades ago, show up at his grand Parisian apartment. Now, with all the weight of the past, the two drag Stern on a journey in search for Toni, the woman the three of them loved. They are on their way to the beginning of all things.

THE BEGINNING OF ALL THINGS is a rich, stormy and beautiful story about identity, love and delusions, about friendships that do and don’t survive the weight of years. Yaniv Iczkovits tells a big tale, with myths and legends, about what was and what could have been.

Rights Sold: 

Romania: Humanitas

Reviews:

“In his new novel, Iczkovits establishes his status as the central Israeli writer who writes charismatic and sweeping popular literature… Iczkovits is a skilled literary architect... He is an ambitious writer, but not ostentatious. It allows readers to follow the myriad of happenings, not to overwhelm or overload, but with an experienced hand.” —Haaretz

“This is a monumental book, built in the form of a symphony.” —Prof. Ariel Hirschfeld, Hebrew University

“This is a novel that refuses to succumb to that numbing and dangerous drug of coherence, of a unity plot, of something ‘well written’. Its protagonists move in a world where the connections between cause and effect are not clear, and they are led and managed by forces greater and stronger than themselves." —Prof. Haim Weiss, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

“We loved this story: three teenagers in a Romanian town are given an impossible task – to save the Jewish community. Decades later, the three friends, aging Holocaust survivors, join forces on a madcap trip behind the Iron Curtain, in a parable about how we really betray in order to be able to tell our story. And above all, it’s a love story that crosses years, borders,  fences and transports.” —Maya Sela and Yuval Avivi, Kan 11