Sacred

by Eliette Abecassis

Translated by Karen Newby from the French title La Repudiee.

Winner of The Ecrivain Croyant Literary Prize, nominated for the Prix Femina and the Grand Prix du Roman de L'Academie Francaise

Filmed as Kadosh by Israeli director Amos Gitai. Selected for the Cannes Film Festival.

Sacred is the moving love story of a young woman, living in the ultra-orthodox community in Jerusalem. Spurned by her community for failing to conceive a child in ten years of marriage, her husband is forced by custom to reject her. Should she tell the truth about her husband — or watch while he marries another?

“In Rachel and Naomi, Abecassis creates two powerful and sympathetic heroines, and the power and beauty of her writing renders their story both heartbreaking and hypnotic.” Observer

“A terrifying book on the feminine condition.” Le Figaro

Éliette Abécassis (born January 27, 1969) is a French writer of Moroccan-Jewish descent.[1] She is a professor of philosophy at the University of Caen Normandy.

Abécassis was born in Strasbourg. Her first book, Qumran, was released in 1996 after three years of research, and has been translated into eighteen languages. Her second title, L'Or et la cendre, details the historical and mysterious murder of a Berlin theologian. Murder also figures high in her 1998 work on the philosophical origins of homicide entitled Petite Métaphysique du meurtre. Her next novel, La Répudiée, a finalist for the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française and for the Prix Fémina, was the inspiration for Amos Gitai's film Kadosh.[2] To research this book, Abécassis spent six months in the very orthodox Mea Shearim section of Jerusalem.

Her book Clandestin (2003) was one of twelve books chosen for the Prix Goncourt.

A movie was made inspired by her book Un heureux événement.

Eliette Abécassis

Books