Unicorn

By Moshe Sakal

Published in Hebrew by Kinneret, Zmora, Dvir. Tel Aviv, 2020

 

A young writer sets off to uncover a dark secret from his past. The events and his experience stem from an enigmatic family mystery that the readers are also invited to decipher. What role is played by the narrator’s partners, and by his therapist and her lovers? And what of the voyage in the footsteps of prehistoric man and the ancient cave drawing of a unicorn in France?

 

• First chapter published in prestigious daily newspaper Haaretz

• Recommended in Yediot Aharonot

• Featured in “Monthly Recommendations” on E-vrit digital bookstore

 

From the Reviews:

 

“A story that dives head-first into the profound, entangled relationship between a son and his mother.”

Kobi Medan, host of cultural affairs show on Israeli television

 

“A family mystery, an ancient mystery, a dark secret with an alluring blinding light—all these in one unicorn, a novel that you can’t put down.”

            Reuven Miran, author, translator and publisher

 

“Unicorn is a novel that moves between fantastical dimensions and the here-and-now, which reads with great pleasure and wonder. Run out to buy it.”

Keren Agmon, Saloona internet magazine

 

“Sakal’s mastery of the language is evident throughout the novel…crafting a stylistically elegant, unique and elastic kind of prose. The novel is a kaleidoscope of sorts, in which small, seemingly insignificant thematic shards or threads constantly appear and disappear…”

Nadav Linial, University of Michigan

 

“Sakal challenges the rigid boundaries and the adherence to the holy setting of traditional therapy.”

Neta Amit, Hebrew Psychology website

 

“Sakal crafts an eccentric expanded family, unified by a substance that preserves the narrator’s soul and creates an exhilarating alchemy. The protagonist’s secret casts a heavy shadow on his life story, but at the same time it is a glimmering star in the sky for him, to whose light he is drawn. This is the unicorn, the artistic, corporeal-spiritual symbol of all that is pure and sublime.”

Yigal Schwartz, editor

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