EVERYONE knows the story of Jonah, swallowed by a whale when he disobeyed God’s command to turn the people of Ninevah from their evil ways, and fled to Tarshish instead. Now, from the Old Testament’s bare four chapters blossoms a rich narrative at the hands of the prize-winning Romanian author Joana Pârvulescu and her brilliant translator, Alistair Ian Blyth.

Jonah gains a backstory, a face, and companions, each with their own skilfully sketched personality. On the voyage to Tarshish, he travels with his uncle, the merry healer Elijah, and the beggars Elisha and blind Abiel, not to mention a motley crew of Phoenicians, Africans, and Greeks. In Ninevah, he takes a lover.

We encounter a plethora of minor characters, and find out what it actually felt like to be inside the whale, or under the sprouted gourd, and who rescued him when he was cast ashore. Behind in Gat-Hefer he leaves a woman expecting his child and a motherless daughter, the first to tell the story to her granddaughter and pass on the silver ring with the blue stone.

Every grandmother continues unfolding the tale, replete with sights, sounds, smells and flavours, in the same warm, chatty voice from generation to generation. You realise that the narrator has changed only when a different child is addressed. Outside events sometimes fleetingly intrude, like cars passing a curtained room, but don’t interrupt the flow, right up to the present day, when the descendants are scattered throughout the world.

The book is multi-layered, and every reader will find something different. On one level, it is a tale as rich as the Iliad, which you read slowly and miss when it ends. On another, it is a study of a personality whose path is shaped by an inner voice, and the way in which this affects the lives of those who love him.

Fiona Hook is a writer and EFL teacher.

Jonah and His Daughter
Ioana Pârvulescu
Alistair Ian Blyth, translator
Istros Books £13.99
(978-1-912545-37-7)
Church Times Bookshop £12.59