An Egyptian Novel

The hero of Castel-Bloom’s latest novel—an exploration of Jewish identity and family history—can trace her roots back on her father’s side to the expulsion of the Jews of Spain in 1492, when seven brothers of the Kastil family landed on the Gaza coast after a long series of trials and tribulations. Her mother claims their family goes back even further, 3,000 years, to the only clan that Jewish history has ignored: the one that said `No’ to Moses and stayed behind in Egypt. Mixing historical and biographical facts, made-up legends plus other fictions and exaggerations, Castel-Bloom has written an unconventional saga of her family, the Kastils: family meals and get-togethers, deaths and funerals, sayings and stories, and all those things that are not to be mentioned.