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- Death of a Monk is a novel by Alon Hilu, an Israeli writer, published in 2004. The novel is based on the blood libel against the Jews in Damascus, Syria in 1840. The novel is based around the historical incident known as the Damascus affair, offers a different interpretation, and has caused astonishment among historians by adding a homosexual interpretation for the historical events. The novel was one of the five finalists of the prestigious Sapir Award in Israel (2005), and was awarded the Presidential Prize for Literature (Israel, 2006). Death of a Monk was written at first in Hebrew and had been translated into English (Harvill Secker, London) and other European languages. The real historical events of "the Damascus Affair" are the disappearance of a monk on the eve of Passover in the Jewish quarter of Damascus. It led to blood libel against the Jews, putting some of them in jail while others were killed. The novel Death of a Monk leads to certain inevitable outcomes - though not by expected means - and, in Hilu's imaginative re-telling, not everyone is who they seem to be. Hilu has taken a piece of history and cast it in another light. Hilu vividly recreates the twisted alleyways of the old city of Damascus, its air scented with anisette, araq, coffee and lemon; he equally vividly reveals the hero's attraction to other men and his perpetual struggle to assert himself. (en)
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