Muck: A Novel

by Dror Burstein, Gabriel Levin (Translator)

Overview

“Those who lament that the novel has lost its prophecy should pay heed and cover-price: Muck is the future, both of Jerusalem and of literature. God is showing some rare good taste, by choosing to speak to us through Dror Burstein.” —Joshua Cohen, author of Moving Kings and Book of Numbers

In a Jerusalem both ancient and modern, where the First Temple squats over the populace like a Trump casino, where the streets are literally crawling with prophets and heathen helicopters buzz over Old Testament sovereigns, two young poets are about to have their lives turned upside down.

Struggling Jeremiah is worried that he might be wasting his time trying to be a writer; the great critic Broch just beat him over the head with his own computer keyboard. Mattaniah, on the other hand, is a real up-and-comer—but he has a secret he wouldn’t want anyone in the literary world to know: his late father was king of Judah.

Jeremiah begins to despair, and in that despair has a vision: that Jerusalem is doomed, and that Mattaniah will not only be forced to ascend to the throne but will thereafter witness his people slaughtered and exiled. But what does it mean to tell a friend and rival that his future is bleak? What sort of grudges and biases turn true vision into false prophecy? Can the very act of speaking a prediction aloud make it come true? And, if so, does that make you a seer, or just a schmuck?

Dramatizing the eternal dispute between poetry and power, between faith and practicality, between haves and have-nots, Dror Burstein’s Muck is a brilliant and subversive modern-dress retelling of the book of Jeremiah: a comedy with apocalyptic stakes by a star of Israeli fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250234872
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	11/19/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.07(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Dror Burstein was born in 1970 in Netanya, Israel, and lives in Tel Aviv. A novelist, poet, and translator, he is the author of several books, including the novels Kin and Netanya. He has been awarded the Jerusalem Prize for Literature; the Ministry of Science and Culture Prize for Poetry; the Bernstein Prize for his debut novel, Avner Brenner; the Prime Minister’s Prize; and the Goldberg Prize for his 2014 novel, Sun’s Sister.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS


Part One: Jehoiakim, 1

Part Two: Jehoiachin, 155

Part Three: Zedekiah, 287

Editorial Reviews

"Muck features talking dogs, angelic interventions, and (most importantly) the largest bowl of hummus in the world—hardly what we might expect from a book purporting to retell the Book of Jeremiah. But this epic social novel, because it is and is not set in present-day Jerusalem, is and is not a political novel, maintains a balancing act. By retrofitting the Biblical source text to a worldly rendition of the Middle East in crisis, it manages to contain its surrealism and focus its absurdity to strikingly sober ends . . . Burstein has a charmingly light touch that manages to convey both urgency and a fatalist’s taste for the absurd." —J. W. McCormack, Longreads

"Burstein’s fictional Jerusalem is mired in filth, corruption and crises of muddy intractability. One of the most brilliant of today’s Israeli authors, Burstein allows his language to slip with ease between the biblical and the contemporary . . . A tour de force . . . Muck treats readers to nothing less than postmodern prophecy." —Adam Rovner, The Forward

"[Muck is] the story of the Book of Jeremiah by way of Atlantic City; it's a tale of cosmic conflict and very small-scale, very human thwarted ambitions—and it's often bitingly funny." —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review

"In Muck . . . Burstein brilliantly and movingly superimposes [the prophet] Jeremiah’s poetic imprecations against the Israel of his time and the strange trajectory of his career, as described in the biblical book named after him, on Israel’s present-day travails. It could easily fall flat, but in Burstein’s hands it is both hilarious and appalling." —Gabriel Josipovici, The New Statesman

"Israeli writer Dror Burstein’s novel Muck turns all the way back to the Babylonian conquest of Judah, updating the scriptural story of Jeremiah . . . An absurdist blending of ancient and contemporary details . . . in the kvetching style of Joseph Heller." —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Influenced by such masterworks as Philip Roth's scabrous Sabbath's Theater, Joseph Heller's satirical Catch-22, and the modernist works of Thomas Pynchon, [Muck] is alternately hilarious (dig those talking dogs) and gripping in its treatment of the power of words. Ultimately, Burstein delivers page-turning suspense that gains resonance through its relevance to contemporary Israel . . . a dazzling and dizzying triumph." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A surreal and searing story." —Vol. 1 Brooklyn

"Burstein manages to wrest Pynchonian satire from biblical eschatology, and his narrative is frequently funny . . . The prevailing sentiment, as Jeremiah’s warnings go unheeded by his fellow light-rail commuters, is an all-too-familiar sense of anxiety about an uncertain future." —Brendan Driscoll, Booklist

"Gritty realism intermixes with historical allusion, allowing [Muck] to function on several levels. The transmogrification of ancient events into a modern context creates a gripping world of hyperrealistic abandon." —Henry Bankhead, Library Journal

From the Publisher

10/22/2018
According to the rabbis, the time of Jewish prophecy ended long ago; Burstein’s richly inventive novel challenges this notion by setting the story of prophet Jeremiah in an Israel that is simultaneously then (the reign of the last kings of Judah) and now (the Babylonians have tanks; the Jerusalemites go into exile via light rail). Jeremiah, a failed poet with a dead sister and a vegan mother, doesn’t want to prophesy exile and destruction, especially since the last king is his childhood friend and fellow poet, but what can he do? The place is epically corrupt: children are sold like chickens to be slaughtered (in imagery reminiscent of Nazi gas “showers”), everything runs on bribes, people disappear into prisons, and even the architecture is barbaric and garish. It’s hard not to read this as a parable for today’s Israel and the struggle over Palestine. Near the end, Jeremiah is thrown into a pit: he emerges covered in the titular muck, “Godless, without angels, without prophecy... the pit remained within him.” Burstein (Kin) may not be hopeful, but in this long, tangled, and occasionally obscure novel, he has found a way to speak, as prophets and novelists do, of present, past, and future, what was and what might be. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2018-08-21

Set in Jerusalem in neither the biblical past nor the politically inflamed, gas-mask present but an eerie projection of one over the other, Burstein's novel centers on the persecution of the poet/prophet Jeremiah for warning of the city's destruction.

It's bad enough that Jeremiah gets tossed in a lethal mud (or muck) pit for putting Jerusalem's idol-loving population in a cranky mood; he also gets whacked in the head with his computer keyboard by a famous literary critic. Jeremiah's chief nemesis proves to be his boyhood friend Mattaniah, a tattooed would-be poet whose publishing rate isn't hurt by his being the son of the slain king of Judah. Through a series of troublesome successions, the unfit Mattaniah is made to become King Zedekiah. His great promises for the future include stopping the glaciers from melting and eliminating the use of plastic bags. As for that Babylonian army circling Jerusalem? No worries. As we recently saw with Jo Nesbø's Macbeth, it's not uncommon for novelists and dramatists to employ modern dress to freshen old tales and make them relevant. But Burstein's employment of the device is different. With its trippy overlapping of eras, settings, styles, and sensibilities, the book's dense narrative seems to unfold under a constant fog. Influenced by such masterworks as Philip Roth's scabrous Sabbath's Theater, Joseph Heller's satirical Catch-22, and the modernist works of Thomas Pynchon, the book is alternately hilarious (dig those talking dogs) and gripping in its treatment of the power of words. Ultimately, Burstein delivers page-turning suspense that gains resonance through its relevance to contemporary Israel.

Israeli novelist Burstein's audacious reimagining of events leading to the siege of Jerusalem is a dazzling and dizzying triumph.

Kirkus Reviews