R.A. Giuggio

AVRUM

 

     In a mountainside town in southern Judea, at the beginning of the Common Era, two young boys are playing a game they invented using sticks and stones. Friends since just about birth, the two are inseparable. One is fated to travel extensively (for his time and place) in search of his destiny,and will write a memoir about his trek. The other will spend most of his life within twenty miles of his home town, and never put pen to paper. But he will be the subject of more literature than any other figure in human history.

     The Book of Avrum is the first boy's story, detailing not only his experiences, but those that intertwined and intersected with his friend's. Avrum bar Jacob will die in obscurity thirty years after his friend's execution, which remains today the  most revered  and honored (and debated) death of all time. But he will spend those thirty years obsessing about who his friend really was, and the consequences of that friendship.

     Reading Avrum will challenge you to question everything you think you know about the second boy, and the events that led to his demise. Your faith may fluctuate; it may be strengthened. But hopefully it will be more informed.

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