A Mystical Journey

Angelina Muñiz-Huberman's historical novel, A Mystical Journey, combines poetic prose and an improbable happy ending. Within the structure of the archetypal journey of the hero, a Jewish teenager in late sixteenth-century Spain manages to avoid the Inquisition by joining a perilous Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is assisted by a magical muleteer who appears and disappears periodically in different guises until the protagonist and his beloved Miriam are safely settled in the northern town of Safed. Although the author's attention to Jewish history and her poetic style mark the majority of her books of fiction and essays, A Mystical Journey is one of her most important works and one that contributes to her reputation as one of the most important contemporary writers in Mexico and Latin America.