Sarah (Charnwood Library) - Hardcover

MAREK HALTER was born in Poland in 1936. During World War II, he and his parents narrowly escaped from the Warsaw ghetto. After a time in Russia and Uzbekistan, they emigrated to France in 1950. There Halter studied pantomime with Marcel Marceau and embarked on a career as a painter that led to several international exhibitions. In 1967, he founded the International Committee for a Negotiated Peace Agreement in the Near East and played a crucial role in the organization of the first official meetings between Palestinians and Israelis.

In the 1970s, Marek Halter turned to writing. He first published The Madman and the Kings, which was awarded the Prix Aujourd’hui in 1976. He is also the author of several internationally acclaimed, bestselling historical novels, including The Messiah, The Mysteries of Jerusalem, and The Book of Abraham, which won the Prix du Livre Inter. Halter is currently working on the second and third volumes of the Canaan Trilogy: Zipporah and Lilah, which will be published in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

Four thousand years ago, Sarah was born into a wealthy and powerful family in the Sumerian city of Ur. She was meant, at twelve, to marry a man chosen by her father. Instead, she fled to the banks of the Euphrates river, where she was destined to meet a stranger. His name was Abraham and, although he was a member of a poor nomadic tribe, their encounter was enough to convince Sarah that their future lay together. And so she abandoned everything to follow Abraham and his alien God; a God of whom no one had ever heard; a God who was invisible and who appeared to communicate solely through her husband; a God who, one day, would command Abraham to kill their beloved son in his name, and before whom Sarah would beg for mercy...