The Tunnel, a novel by venerable Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua (Friendly Fire; The Retrospective), is a gentle fable about aging, marital love and understanding between two peoples in conflict. Zvi Luria is a retired engineer at 73, whose recent MRI reveals the beginning of frontal lobe atrophy. His wife, Dina, a prominent pediatrician, encourages him to seek out a part-time job with his former employer, hoping that may slow his cognitive decline.
Zvi lands a position as an unpaid assistant to Asael Maimoni, a young engineer, and the two become involved in an unusual project--the construction of a secret army road across the massive Ramon Crater in Israel's Negev Desert. As part of the design, Asael proposes a tunnel. It would allow an exiled Palestinian family to continue to reside atop a hill that also features archeological ruins dating from the third century B.C.E., a symbol of the "human predicament arising from two nations living in the same homeland."
The machinations that lead to the design of a "modest, homey tunnel," and bring Zvi and Asael to the project's end, are less interesting than is Yehoshua's wry portrait of a proud, accomplished man who's been given a glimpse of his destiny, but who nonetheless is determined to live out his remaining days in dignity and with purpose. In a country that's riven by conflict, Yehoshua's depiction of the interactions between the Israeli civil servants and the Palestinian family at least hints at the possibility of reconciliation, if not full-fledged peace. The Tunnel could have been a depressing account of decline, but instead becomes one that chooses optimism over despair. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer