A 12-year-old helps a septuagenarian friend weather a potentially
deadly misunderstanding in this brief, reflective import, winner of
a British prize for translated works. His mother may disapprove,
but David enjoys being around old people-particularly a spry, sharp
photographer named Heinrich. That pleasure turns to horror,
however, when a furious rival from a decades-old love affair
accuses Heinrich of theft, and, of all things, challenges him to a
duel. For complex reasons, Heinrich accepts, leaving David to
search frantically for a way to head off the impending tragedy.
Even though he casts David as an adult looking back on the
incident, Grossman cranks up the suspense with frequent cuts back
and forth in time, plus side meditations on growing up, and growing
old; in the end, David does find a way to head off the stiff-necked
duelists, and the episode even kindles new friendships. Set in
Jerusalem in the mid-1960s, this doesn't have the broad-or, for
that matter, child-appeal of Daniella Carmi's Samir and Yonatan
(2000), but it's refreshing to have a tale in which the city's
people loom larger than its issues. (Fiction. 11-13) (Kirkus
Reviews)
I was twelve years old when what I'm about to tell you took place.
Today, sixteen years later, I still recall the pounding of my heart
as I heard the approaching footsteps of the bully of Heidelberg
University. Above me on the bed sat Heinrich Rosenthal, a little
man, seventy years old, with a big white mane of hair, but under
the bed I was very much alone, and I remember thinking in those
moments of suspense, Mom's right, maybe I should go out and make
friends my own age instead of always hanging around by myself or
with weird people like Mr Rosenthal. So begins an intriguing tale
of friendship between an extraordinarily beguiling boy and an old
man with a past - a history that shapes the plot of "Duel" and
cleverly unfurls in the way real stories do between friends. David
and Mr Rosenthal are generations apart in age but equally brave,
equally stubborn and each as unique for their years as the other.
General
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