Minotaur, Tammuz Benjamin

With echoes of Kafka and Conrad, the acclaimed Israeli author of Castle in Spain offers a provocative, spare, slow-to-unfold mystery of character (Kirkus Reviews).

On the day of his forty-first birthday, Israeli secret agent Alexander Abramov encounters a beautiful young redhead on a city bus. He immediately recognizes her as the woman he has been searching for all his life, the one he has loved forever. Though they have never met, he is certain this young woman named Thea is an essential part of his lifes destiny.
Using all the tricks of his trade and communicating through anonymous letters, Abramov takes control of Theas life without ever revealing his identity. Soon, Abramovs desperate, dangerous love for a woman half his age consumes everything in its path: time, distance, and rival suitors. And for Thea, keeping her lover safe from the amorous Mr. Anonymous becomes an obsession of her own. Only Abramovs own story, of a life conditioned by isolation, distrust, violence, and murder, can explain his devastating manipulation of the woman he professes to love.
Hailed by Graham Greene as the best novel of the year upon its initial release in 1981, Minotaur is a highly inventive literary thriller.