Yossi Waxman

David Bokobsa is a fifty-year-old bisexual, newly divorced Tel Aviv-based architect and a father. He is unhappy. Searching for desire, David meets Shlomi, a passionate, married homosexual man. Shlomi recognizes David’s wounds and encourages him to tell him how he became the man he is today.

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At age sixteen, David and his parents moved to Paris. A French teacher named Veronique took him under her wing, offering him her affection and encouraging him to discover his own body. These new physical experiences excited David, but an undefined danger that only intense desire could generate seemed to hover over his head. David continues to be plagued with a longing for the formative years of his manliness. Shlomi encourages him to find out what became of Veronique.

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Though David is bisexual, he is also a homophobe. Though he is half-Moroccan, he is also a terrible bigot who cannot accept his Mizrahi roots. He is a sworn womanizer who occasionally needs a man. He treads the line between the known and the hidden, between the many categories to which he does not fit.

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This is a story of unfulfilled love between two men who become good friends in spite of their challenges. A story about the eternal search for the flavor of life, and about the necessary failures involved. This is also a very personal protest against political correctness and acceptable LGBTQ imagery, allowing for a presentation of a different Israeli masculinity — misleading, uprooted, hanging between power and weakness.

 

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From the Press:

 

"Yossi Waxman’s latest novel, Passionately, establishes his position as the undisputed king of Hebrew literature when it comes to politically incorrect writing."

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Alit Karp, Haaretz

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"With the help of the character of David Bokobsa, a radical and ostentatious man, Yossi Waxman’s new novel undermines the rule of political correctness, as well as mocking normative models of masculinity, utilizing these acts of dissent to formulate a tender expression of love."

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Keren Dotan, Israel Hayom

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"Waxman knows how to talk about sex in a bold, blunt manner that is rare in our local landscape… Passionately offers the blend of comedy and melodrama that is his signature style; a combination of wit, crudeness, fantasy, and fine art. He has evolved as a writer, and this novel is more relentless and restless than the ones that came before it, but also more complex and profound".

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Yoni Livne, Yediot Aharonot

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"Waxman does not compromise his persistent truth. After all, nobody writes like him — subversive, bold, blatant, wild, sexual, unrestrained, unyielding… Waxman takes no mercy on his readers. Instead, he enchants them so that they might join him on his harrowing journey in exchange for moments of true grace and radiant beauty."

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Nitzan Weisman

 

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