The Mandelbaum Gate
Barbara Vaughan, an English schoolteacher who is half Jewish by birth and Catholic by conversion, comes to Jerusalem in 1961 to see the holy places and to make up her mind about the archaeologist she wants to marry. The Eichmann trial is running in the Israeli half of the city, and the crossing point in the wall will not pass a Jew into Jordan, so she goes over in disguise. Spark's longest and least characteristic novel, written after she had left England for good; it took the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
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Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Quest object (Greimas)
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 54% · 13 shared
- 50% · 12 shared
- 50% · 12 shared
- 50% · 12 shared
- 47% · 12 shared
- 47% · 12 shared