Product Description

From the celebrated author of The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev, a trilogy of related novellas about a woman whose life touches three very different men—stories that encompass some of the profoundest themes of the twentieth century.

Ilana Davita Dinn is the listener to whom three men relate their lives.

As a young girl, she offers English lessons to a teenage survivor of the camps. In “The Ark Builder,” he shares with her the story of his friendship with a proud old builder of synagogue arks, and what happened when the German army invaded their Polish town.

As a graduate student, she finds herself escorting a guest lecturer from the Soviet Union, and in “The War Doctor,” her sympathy moves him to put his painful past to paper recounting his experiences as a Soviet NKVD agent who was saved by an idealistic doctor during the Russian civil war, only to encounter him again during the terrifying period of the Kremlin doctors’ plot.

And, finally, we meet her in “The Trope Teacher,” in which a distinguished professor of military history, trying to write his memoirs, is distracted by his wife’s illness and by the arrival next door of a new neighbor, the famous writer I. D. (Ilana Davita) Chandal.

Poignant and profound, Chaim Potok’s newest fiction is a major addition to his remarkable—and remarkably loved—body of work.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #169327 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-30
• Released on: 2002-07-30
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.20" h x .63" w x 5.51" l, .75 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Library Journal
Potok returns with three novellas linked by a single character, Ilana Davita Dinn, whose life experiences carry us from the Holocaust to the Kremlin's doctor's plot to the quieter terrors of old age.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Potok returns with three novellas linked by a single character, Ilana Davita Dinn, whose life experiences carry us from the Holocaust to the Kremlin's doctor's plot to the quieter terrors of old age.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Potok's latest book is a collection of three novellas that share a character, Ilana Davita Dinn, and the theme of the effects of war on men's lives. In "The Ark Builder," which takes place the summer before she begins college, Ilana begins to teach English to a young boy, Noah, who has survived the Holocaust. He tells Ilana the story of how he and his brother helped an old man build an ark in a synagogue. In the second story, Ilana is hardly present at all; a former KGB officer leaves her the story of his life in written form. Leon Shertov, a Russian Jew who fought the Germans in World War II, is treated by a dignified doctor who saves his arm from amputation. Later, under Stalin, the doctor who helped him years ago is jailed. Finally, in "The Troupe Teacher," Ilana, now a writer, coaxes a disturbing story out of Benjamin Walter, a professor of warfare. A moving and powerful book from a writer whose first novel, The Chosen, is still widely read and loved. Kristine Huntley
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