Past Continuous
Yaakov Shabtai
 The Novel focuses on three friends, Goldman, Caesar, and Israel, in 1970's Tel Aviv, as well as their acquaintances, love interests, and relatives. The story begins with the death of Goldman's father on April 1 and ends a little after Goldman's suicide on January 1. The past is woven into this short "present" period, through a complex stream of associations. The three men, lurching between guilt and depression, lose themselves in sexual adventures, amateur philosophy or compare their lives unfavorably to those of their sometimes heroic, sometime pitiful elders. The older characters can always hold firm to something or other, whether socialism and hatred of religious Jews, insights gained in Siberia, or refusal to admit that Israel is not Poland. The younger characters seethe instead in doubt and sweat.