Rachele Luzzatto is the only daughter of a Jewish family in northern Italy. Curious and intelligent, she is caught between her interest in religions – her own and others – and her father's violent rejection of them all.

A disagreement ensues between them about the part she is given in the school nativity play. At the same time, she discovers that her father is ill; the severity of his illness is only revealed to her very gradually while her teacher, various members of her family and even her rabbi offer her wide-ranging and humane support.

A.B. Yehoshua paints a complex, and humorous, picture of conflicting religious identities and historical memory in this tender character study of a young girl at the threshold of adulthood.



Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A.B. Yehoshua was the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories, and several plays and volumes of essays. He has won prizes worldwide and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and adapted for film and opera. An outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies, he continued to speak about and search for solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Yehoshua died in June 2022, aged 85.