Jericho Mosaic

By: Edward Whittemore

Narrated by: Allan Robertson

Yossi is an ideal agent for the Mossad. He's recruited by an agent named Tajar, and code-named "the Runner." Thus begins the longest-running and most successful operation in the history of Israeli intelligence. Meanwhile, in the desert oasis of Jericho, Abu Musa, an Arab patriarch, and Moses the Ethiopian, meet each day over games of shesh-besh and glasses of Arak to ponder history and humanity. We learn about the friendship of Yossi's son, Assaf, an Israeli soldier badly wounded during the Six Day War, and Yousef, a young Arab teacher who, in support of the Palestinian cause, decides to live as an exile in the Judean wilderness.

©1987 Edward Whittemore, Copyright renewed 2002 by Edward Whittemore Estate, Foreword copyright 2002 by Tom Wallace, Introduction copyright 2002 by James Hougan, “An Editorial Relationship” copyright 2002 by Judy Karasik (P)2013 Audible Inc.

So glad I heard this one again

I have owned all of Whittemore’s books in hardcovers and all the audiobooks, which I have read or listened to numerous times. My listening of this book completely surpassed me, because of all of his titles, this is the one that I least remember. I must have been asleep when I previously read it, since this book is now my favorite of all his books.

I’ve read reviews that suggested that Whittemore had run out of steam by the time he wrote this one. I must disagree. I believe that he was able to write the first three in alternative history form which has been compared to Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in order to give a fairly accurate overview of the past. It was also compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace which I again agree, as I am listening to it for the sixth time as I follow along in a Kindle edition matching the audio book.

However, in Jericho Mosaic he wrote about the present as historical fiction, based a real person who lived in Whittemore’s present. I shall continue to reread his works many more times in my lifetime, and I continue to pick up parts of the story I’d completely forgotten.