The Mandelbaum Gate.

SPARK, Muriel.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 116375

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.

First edition of Spark’s complex, suspenseful novel. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, warmly inscribed by the author in the year of publication to her American agent, Dorothy Golding, “Dorothy – happy remembrances & love – Mariel 4 October 1965.” Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Typography, binding and jacket design by George Salter.

The Mandelbaum Gate is set in Jerusalem in 1961 (with the backdrop of the Adolf Eichmann trial). While on a pilgrimage to Holy Land, half Jewish Catholic-convert Barbara Vaughan is planning to meet her fiance Harry Clegg, an archeologist working in Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found). To do this she must pass through the Mandelbaum Gate into Jordanian held Jerusalem; due to her Jewish roots this is a dangerous operation and she enlists the help of Freddy Hamilton, a staid British diplomat and various Arab contacts who may or may not be sympathetic to her cause. ''Takes the breath away . . . Pure adventure . . . Suspense as artfully maintained as anything by Graham Greene" (The New Republic).