The Dovekeepers
A Novel
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Book details:
- Simon & Schuster UK |
- 400 pages |
- ISBN 9780857205445 |
- September 2012
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The Assassin’s Daughter
We came like doves across the desert. In a time when there was nothing but death, we were grateful for anything, and most grateful of all when we awoke to another day.
W e had been wandering for so long I forgot what it was like to live within walls or sleep through the night. In that time I lost all I might have possessed if Jerusalem had not fallen: a husband, a family, a future of my own. My girlhood disappeared in the desert. The person I’d once been vanished as I wrapped myself in white when the dust rose into clouds. We were nomads,...
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- Book Cover Image (jpg): The Dovekeepers
Mass Market Paperback 9780857205445(0.9 MB)
- Author Photo (jpg): Alice Hoffman
© Deborah Feingold(1.1 MB)
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Book Reviews
Reading Group Guide
Topics & Questions for Discussion
- The novel is split into four principal parts, with each of the main characters—Yael, Revka, Aziza, and Shirah—narrating one section. Which of these women did you find most appealing, and why? Were you surprised to find you had compassion for characters who were morally complex and often made choices that later caused guilt and sorrow?
- Yael describes her relationship with Ben Simon as “a destroying sort of love” (p. 46). What does she mean by that? Are there other relationships in the novel that could be described in the same way?
- From Yael’s setting free the Romans’ lion, to Shirah’s childhood vision of a fish in the Nile, to the women’s care of the doves, animals are an important component in the book. What did animals mean to the people of this ancient Jewish society, and what specific symbolic forms do they take in the novel?
- The figure of Wynn, “The Man from the North,” who comes to serve the women in the dovecote, is based upon arch











