The last major work published during the lifetime of its author, the largest representative of the latest Jewish literature in Hebrew, the Nobel Prize winner. The novel takes place in Palestine during the days of the Second Aliyah. In the center of the story is one of the first settlers in the land of Israel, who decides to return to the environment of religious Jews, familiar to him since childhood. The novel's complex situations and intertwining motives — lack of work and dysfunctional love that has not subsided for a long time — the moral issues raised in it, the integrity and inner rhythm of the narrative, the ominous image of a rabid dog saturated with symbolism, from which the main character dies, place the novel on one of the highest peaks of Jewish literature.