National bestseller and a remarkable book from the New York Times in 2017. Awarded as the best book of the year 2017 by Esquire, Times Literary Supplement, Elle Magazine, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Financial Times, Guardian, Refinery29, Popsugar, and Globe and Mail.

"A brilliant novel. I am in awe." - Philip Roth.

"An important American novelist" (New York Times), the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The History of Love, creates a painfully beautiful and stunningly original novel about personal transformation that weaves together the stories of two different individuals – an older lawyer and a young novelist – whose transcendental quest leads them into the same Israeli desert.

Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, greed, and larger-than-life personality have been a force to be reckoned with for eighty years, undergoes a metamorphosis. In the wake of his parents.