House on endless waters : a novel / Emuna Elon

Originally published in Isreal in 2016 by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir ; English translation ©2020.

A novel about a writer who embarks on a transformative journey in Amsterdam, where he discovers the shocking truth about his mother's wartime experience - unearthing a remarkable story that becomes the subject of his magnum opus. At the behest of his agent, renowned author Yoel Blum reluctantly agrees to visit his birthplace of Amsterdam to meet with his Dutch publisher, despite promising his late mother that he would never return to that city. While touring the Jewish Museum with his wife, Yoel stumbles upon a looping reel of photos offering a glimpse of pre-war Dutch Jewish life, and is astonished to see the youthful face of his beloved mother staring back at him, posing with her husband, Yoel's older sister, Nettie...and an infant he doesn't recognize. This unsettling discovery launches him into a fervent search for the truth, revealing Amsterdam's dark wartime history and the underground networks which hid Jewish children away from danger - but at a cost. The deeper into the past Yoel digs, the better he understands his mother's silence, and the more urgent the question that has unconsciously haunted him for a lifetime - Who am I? - becomes. Evocative, insightful, and deeply resonant, House on Endless Waters beautifully illustrates the complex nature of identity and belonging, and the inextricability of past and present.

Translated from the Hebrew to English