Marek Halter Books In Order

Canaan Books In Order

  1. Sarah (2004)
  2. Zipporah (2005)
  3. Lilah (2006)

Novels

  1. The Book of Abraham (1986)
  2. The Children of Abraham (1990)
  3. The Wind of the Khazars (2003)
  4. Mary of Nazareth (2008)
  5. The Messiah (2008)

Non fiction

  1. The Jester and the Kings (1989)
  2. Stories of Deliverance (1998)
  3. Why the Jews? (2021)

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Marek Halter Books Overview

Sarah

The first novel in a dazzling new trilogy about the women of the Old Testament by internationally bestselling author Marek Halter.

The story of Sarah and of history itself begins in the cradle of civilization: the Sumerian city state of Ur, a land of desert heat, towering gardens, and immense wealth. The daughter of a powerful lord, Sarah is raised in great luxury, but balks at the arranged marriage her father has planned for her. The groom is handsome and a nobleman, but on their wedding day, Sarah panics and impulsively flees to the vast, empty marshes outside the city walls. There she meets a young man, Abram, a member of a nomadic tribe of outsiders. Drawn to this exotic stranger, Sarah spends the night with him, but reluctantly returns to her father’s house. But on her return, still desperate to avoid another wedding, she drinks a poisonous potion that will make her barren and thus unfit for marriage.

Many years later, Abram s people return to Ur, and he discovers that the lost, rebellious girl from the marsh has been transformed into the most splendid and revered woman in Sumeria the high priestess of the goddess Ishtar. But the memory of their night together has always haunted Sarah, and she gives up her exalted life to join Abram’s tribe and follow the one true God, an invisible deity who speaks only to Abram. It is then that her journey truly begins a journey that holds the key to her remarkable destiny as the mother of nations.

From the great ziggurat of Ishtar and the fertile valleys of Canaan to the bedchamber of the mighty Pharaoh himself, Sarah s story reveals an ancient world full of beauty, intrigue, and miracles.

Zipporah

In the time of the Pharaoh, a tiny infant is rescued from the banks of the Red Sea. She is named Zipporah, the little bird. Although she is a Cush*ite by birth one of the black people of the lands to the south she is taken in by Jethro, high priest and sage of the Midianites. Jethro adores his adopted daughter, and she is an honored member of his family. But the blackness of Zipporah‘s skin sets her apart and will decide her future: she will be an outsider, and the men of her adopted tribe will not want her as a wife. But when she becomes a young woman, Zipporah s destiny changes forever. While drawing water at a well one day, she meets a handsome young man, a stranger. Like her, he is an outsider, a foreigner. His name is Moses. A Hebrew raised in the house of the Pharaoh, Moses is a fugitive, forced to flee his homeland of Egypt after murdering one of the Pharaoh s cruel overseers. Zipporah knows almost immediately that this man will be the husband and partner she never thought she would have. At first Moses wants nothing more than a peaceful life with the Midianites. He is content in his role as Zipporah s lover and the honorary son of Jethro the sage. But Zipporah refuses to let Moses forget his past or turn away from what she believes to be his true destiny. Although he is the love of her life and the father of her children, Zipporah won t marry Moses until he agrees to return to Egypt to confront Pharaoh and free his people. When God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush, his words echo Zipporah s, and Moses returns to Egypt with Zipporah by his side. A passionate lover and a generous, thoughtful wife, Zipporah becomes the guiding force in Moses struggle. With the help of her powerful father, she teaches the rebellious young man about the rule of law and the force of justice. Because of Zipporah the outsider, the black skinned woman Moses becomes a defender of the oppressed and a liberator of the enslaved. A woman ahead of her time, Zipporah leaps from the pages of this remarkable novel. Bold, independent, and a true survivor, she is a captivating hero*ine, and her world of deserts, temples, and ancient wonders is a fitting backdrop to an epic tale. As Zipporah and Moses came closer to the queen of cities, the road parted company with the riverbank, and they found themselves facing a vast expanse of palm groves between the river and the hills and ocher cliffs, beyond which the desert began. And there, finally, rising into the blue sky, were the temples of Pharaoh. There were about ten of them, the largest surrounded by smaller ones, as if they had given birth to them. Seeming to grow out of the rock, the tops reaching up into the sky, they defied belief, so fantastically huge that beside them, even the cliffs seemed mere hillocks. Their faces shimmered in the heat like oil against the transparent sky. The neatly laid brick road leading to them burned in the sun. Zipporah remembered Moses words about the splendor of Pharaoh s temples, but their hugeness surpassed anything she could have imagined. Nothing here was on a human scale. Not even the stone monsters with the heads of men and the bodies of lions that stood guard before them. Farther on, beneath great pyramids, they could see vast building sites. Colonnades and needles of white limestone and walls carved and painted with thousands of figures rose on the fronts of palaces hollowed out of the cliffs. There were unfinished monsters without wings, and statues without heads. In places, the roads became mere dirt paths, with bricks piled at the sides. And everywhere, the slaves swarmed, working, carrying, hammering, creating a din that rose into the heat of the day and was carried on the air from the farthest reaches of the building sites. FROM ZipporahLook for the Reader s Group Guide at the back of this book. From the Hardcover edition.

Lilah

Set in the magnificent culture of the Middle East more than four thousand years ago, Lilah is a rich and emotionally resonant story of faith, love, and courage.

Living in exile, Lilah is in love with Antinoes, a Persian warrior. They have known each other since they were children, and Antinoes dearly wants to make Lilah his wife. Yet Lilah does not feel she can marry without the blessing of her brother, Ezra. She and Ezra are close, and Lilah knows her brother well he does not want his sister to have a husband outside their faith. Ezra is a scholar of the laws of Moses, and Lilah believes it is her brother’s destiny to lead the Jewish people back to the Promised Land. While Antinoes pressures her to accept his proposal, Lilah realizes that before she can consider her own happiness, it is her duty to help her brother accomplish the seemingly impossible task that is before him.

Putting herself in grave danger, and with the help of Antinoes, Lilah wins Ezra an audience with Artaxerxes II, the King of Kings, who grants permission to lead the exiles on their journey back to the Promised Land. After a hazardous trip across the desert, Lilah, Ezra, and the thousands who join them arrive in Jerusalem. But the hardship of rebuilding the Temple takes its toll, and the religious enthusiasm of some turns to extremism. Ezra, listening to the zealots, orders all non Jewish wives and their children banished from Jerusalem. Lilah, whose love for Antinoes has never wavered, is horrified by this command. She knows she must now choose between her brother and her conscience, which tells her that the time has come to defy him.

Lilah is a timeless story of one woman s stand against intolerance; it will linger in the reader s mind long after the last page has been turned.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Book of Abraham

The story begins in Jerusalem in 70 AD as Abraham the Temple scribe flees the destruction of his home. Two thousand years and a hundred generations later, another Abraham perishes, immolated in the fires of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Wind of the Khazars

At a time when Charlemagne ruled, the Byzantines were encroaching upon Russia, and the faith of Allah was flourishing in Baghdad, there existed a kingdom with a tolerant, advanced civilization: somewhere between the Caucasus mountains and the Volga, the Khazar kingdom grew and flourished, and in one of the oddest choices ever made, converted itself to Judaism. A thousand years later, when the writer Marc Sofer is given an ancient Khazarian coin by a mysterious visitor, he is drawn into investigating the fascinating enigma of the Khazars. Why did these Steppe warriors decide to become Jews? Why, after centuries of power and prosperity, were they effaced from history? What is the connection between this ancient, vanished people, and the terrorist group calling themselves the New Khazars, who have begun attacking oil plants on the Caspian sea? Taking place both in the 10th century and the 21st, this absorbing, dramatic tale is part historical novel, part thriller. The story of the Khazars is interwoven with a contemporary political conspiracy in an unusual blend of reality and fiction that explores the ever important themes of history and identity. Originally published as Le Vent des Khazars Translated by Michael Bernard

Mary of Nazareth

The ancient world and its politics come to life through the eyes of a young Jewish woman, Mary of Nazareth

Miriam also known as Mary was born into a Palestine oppressed by Herod the Great; she is accustomed to living with uncertainty and unrest. But when her beloved father is wrongly imprisoned by the Romans, she takes action. She calls upon a well known rebel by the name of Barabbas, and together they set out to save her father. A daring escape is accomplished and, against staggering odds, Miriam’s father is saved from crucifixion.

Barabbas, flush with the success of the rescue, is intent on leading a full scale rebellion against Herod and the Romans. Along with Mary and her father, he speaks before Jewish leaders who have gathered from various communities. Miriam feels great frustration as the men endlessly debate morality, the wisdom of rebellion, and the nature of God s will. Having almost lost her father, and knowing she will be ostracized, she nevertheless speaks out against the use of violence. And to her surprise, one man, Joseph, listens. He offers to take her to Magdala, where she will be allowed to study in the company of intelligent, well read women. This rare opportunity sets into motion a series of events that will change Miriam s life and the history of the Jewish people forever.

Based on extensive historical and biblical scholarship, Mary of Nazareth is a revealing, utterly captivating portrait of a woman whose story we only thought we knew.

The Messiah

Halter returns with a remarkable tale, based on truth, of the little known crusade by a 16C Jew to marshal support for a Jewish state, 4 centuries before the creation of modern day Israel.

Stories of Deliverance

When Marek Halter was five years old, he and his family fled the Warsaw Ghetto in the hope of fighting for the freedom of Poland. When his family was caught with hundreds of others at Malkinia and told to separate into Poles and Jews, Marek was saved by a Pole who pulled him under a wagon; he and his family escaped by running through open fields amidst the shots of German guns. A split second decision by a Catholic Pole saved Marek’s life and the family continued on to Moscow. In 1994, Marek Halter began his search for the men and women who risked their own lives to save the live of Jews during World War II. He begins his journey in his childhood home of Warsaw, from which he has been away for over 40 years. By interviewing Jewish survivors of the holocaust, Halter developed a list of what he calls the ‘Good and Just’ the people who, according to the Talmud, must exist in each generation in order to save the world from destruction. Our protagonists range from simple peasants on the Polish border to Willy Brandt, the ex Chancellor of Germany, to a Japanese Consul who disobeyed his government. Eventually, his journey leads him through the Netherlands, Sweden, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Japan, Tunisia 14 countries in all. Halter was looking for personal stories with happy endings and the people who made those endings possible. Written as a series of conversations with the heroes and those they rescued, interspersed with the author’s own memories, ‘Stories of Deliverance‘ offers glimpses of the hope and strength we find even in the darkest of times of our history. Halter uses this collection to convince us of two things: that there will always be good people in the world who will give us hope and sustain us in times of oppression; and to warn us that it is only with the memories of good deeds that we will be able to adequately deal with evil.

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