Black Box (novel) - Characters

Characters

• Ilana Brandstatter – the main character in the story, she marries Alex Gideon and eventually they divorce because Ilana is unfaithful. Ilana seeks a new life by marrying Michael Somo, but grows to despise him as well. She is the mother of Boaz Gideon.
• Alec Gideon – the hardened and fanatical IDF officer who marries Ilana. He abandons his family and severs all contact with them and moves to the United States after Ilana is found to be cheating.
• Boaz Gideon – Ilana and Alex's son, he is violent and unruly. This is presumably caused by having seen Alex beat Ilana as a child, and having no father figure later on.
• Michael Somo – the person whom Ilana marries in an attempt to rebuild her life. Like Alec, Michael is fanatical, but this is expressed in his religious and financial dealings.

The book begins with Alex in Chicago, Ilana, Michel-Henri Somo, and their daughter Yifat in Jerusalem, and Boaz at his agricultural school somewhere to the north. Key places in the book include:

• Chicago - where Alex teaches as a professor specializing in fanaticism
• Zikhron Ya'akov - where Alex grew up, where his father lived until he was sent to a sanatorium, and where Boaz moves towards the end of the book to fix it up.
• Kiryat Arba - a settlement near Hebron, where Boaz is sent by Michel to reform, highly religious.
• Kibbutz - an unspecified kibbutz from which Rachel (Ilana's sister) writes, where Ilana and Boaz lived right after the divorce.
• Algeria/France - where Michel was born and then later lived, respectively.
• Poland - where Ilana was born
• Russia - where Alex's father was born