Title: The Book: A Humble Quest into the Hebrew Scriptures
Author: Joseph Heskel Koukou (Author), Sandra Koukou (Editor)
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: B079J77GF2
Genre: Inspiration & Spirituality
Pages: 312
Reviewed by: David Allen
Hollywood Book Reviews
The so-called Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — share many features in common. They are monotheistic, messianic, and intensely bibliophilic: Jews, Christians, and Muslims are the People of the Book.
Author Joseph Heskel Koukou’s The Book: A Humble Quest into the Hebrew Scriptures, very much in these traditions, brings scholarship, history, and family into a unique and passionate focus. And what a book Koukou’s Book is! With some expert post facto editorial assistance from his daughter Sandra, Joseph’s time machine-cum-historiography-cum-memoir delivers a credible, readable, reproducible (among debates with friends) version of history that simply cooks.
Joseph Koukou, born in Iraq, moved to Iran where he owned and ran a brake lining factory. Joseph was greatly loved and respected by his workers. Joseph, one among Iran’s increasingly distressed population of Jews, is accused of pro-Zionist espionage. The minions of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guard subsequently arrest him, then detain him for years in a prison camp called Evin. While there he narrowly escapes execution at the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Court, which had confiscated his factory in 1980 and seized the family assets, all in the name of Allah.
When God gives you lemons! Joseph Koukou, man of the Book, makes the best of things by devoting himself during this protracted ordeal to Scripture, to the books of the Hebrew Bible. In the process of raising himself up, no one gets left behind! Joseph’s fellow prisoners benefit directly when he shares his book learning and accumulating erudition with them. Through faith, through the supernatural patience and persistence of daughter Sandra who does archival research, who shows up dutifully for court hearings, Koukou is eventually released…to finally land, intact, in Great Neck, New York.
That is the capsule summary of the book’s personal dimension. The book operates on two or more others simultaneously. This well-told personal odyssey, accompanied by poignant photographs and drawings by Sandra, is at once so much more. In his book Koukou provides one of the handiest and most accessible explanations of the Middle East Arab-Israeli conflict and its major players this reader has yet to come across.
Koukou’s translation of personal struggle into relatable recent history is masterful, as is the overall level of scholarship and attention to detail in this very fine, very praiseworthy book.