Aharon Appelfeld:
“Govrin has done something many have tried but could not accomplish: writing about a religious experience in an authentic religious language, a full religious experience, without pretension and sentimentality, with all its joy and sorrow.”
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The Providence Journal:
“As The Name progresses, its boxes within boxes opening in succession to reach the heart of things, there are stunning moments of loss and betrayal, of hearts offered and unthinkingly rejected, never to be offered again… This is more than a story of the continuing toll of the Holocaust. It’s more broadly about the human heart, which, once injured, may never recover.”
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David Rosenberg, poet, translator and coauthor of The Book of J:
“The Name is a shocker. It shows religious and secular culture in a duel so passionate and imaginative that it becomes impossible to tell one from the other. Michal Govrin throws back the curtain on Kabbalah and mysticism to disclose the millennial longing of Judeo-Christian history for the Intimate Oneness. She has the learning to open our minds and the narrative skills to leave us thirsting for her story. There has never been a Jewish author like Govrin, in any language, although Isaac Bashevis Singer is bound to be applauding somewhere at this very moment.”
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Grace Shulman:
“A fascinating story of Jewish mysticism and erotic intensity.”