In turn of the century Eastern Europe, a brother and sister have been chosen to guard an ancient cemetery of Jewish martyrs situated on an isolated mountain. The endless snows protect them from the pogroms and plagues that rage in the world below, but that same protective blanket cuts them off from their people and tradition. Escape--from loneliness, from wavering piety, and from the burgeoning desire they feel for one another--becomes impossible. A parable for our times, by the writer whom Irving Howe called "one of the best novelists alive," Unto the Soul lays bare the deepest stirrings of religious feeling and despair within the human soul. "Reconfirms the widespread view that he is one of the most subtle, uncompromising, and concentrated stylists of contemporary prose fiction."  — Houston Chronicle In turn of the century Eastern Europe, a brother and sister have been chosen to guard an ancient cemetery of Jewish martyrs situated on an isolated mountain. The endless snows protect them from the pogroms and plagues that rage in the world below, but that same protective blanket cuts them off from their people and tradition. Escape--from loneliness, from wavering piety, and from the burgeoning desire they feel for one another--becomes impossible. A parable for our times, by the writer whom Irving Howe called "one of the best novelists alive," "Unto the Soul lays bare the deepest stirrings of religious feeling and despair within the human soul. Amalia and Gad, sister and brother, have been bequeathed a terrible honor: to be caretakers of a cemetery of Jewish martyrs set on an isolated mountaintop in turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe. The siblings accept this daunting privilege only to battle their fierce loneliness, wavering piety, and a burgeoning lust they feel for each other. In Unto the Soul, Aharon Appelfeld once again explores the sustenance of faith in the wake of tremulous guilt and an ambiguous God. As in his other internationally acclaimed novels, Appelfeld's spiritual themes, spare and elegant prose, and haunting characterizations combine to create fiction of the highest order. Unto the Soul is the work of a master, an author concerned not only with the spirituality of Judaism, but with the everyday survival of Jews in a hostile world. To read Aharon Appelfeld is to join a solemn quest for introspection and understanding. AHARON APPELFELD  is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including  The Iron Tracks, Until the Dawn's Light  (both winners of the National Jewish Book Award),  The Story of a Life  (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger), and  Badenheim 1939 . Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award.  Blooms of Darkness  won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012 and was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine), in 1932, he died in Israel in 2018. Used Book in Good Condition