By Yosef Wosk
Having circumnavigated the world and also visited both Poles, Yosef Wosk, a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, has been a progenitor of psychogeography. The title piece describes the time he almost died while climbing the Great Pyramid of Giza at midnight. The next day, he descended into an ancient cavern beneath the Great Pyramid where he took off all his clothes, alone, and meditated. Probably more people have walked on the moon.
Naked in a Pyramid is an unconventional book by an original thinker, a former rabbi who owns ancient Torah scrolls, a yellow star from the concentration camps, and Pee-Wee Herman’s yellow bike. There is quite simply nobody like him. Yosef Wosk is a reclusive Lone Ranger who frequently helps others but remains a stranger. Here, for the first time, he has gathered a medley of observations to reveal his private world.
PRAISE FOR NAKED IN A PYRAMID:
“…these are the kind of generational ‘travel’ stories that are easy to love, the trail-markings of ‘a lost and found pilgrim on the road to apotheosis’.”
— Trevor Carolan, The BC Review
“It’s one of those rare books that you wish will never end. … a wildly entertaining, thoughtful, and, some might say, perfect book.”
— Charlie Smith, Pancouver
“There is no one I would trust more to be naked with in a pyramid than Yosef Wosk. In his life, as in his writing, a kind wisdom prevails.”
—Susan Musgrave, Giller nominee and author of Exculpatory Lilies
“Yosef brings us a life of belief, irony, fascination with places, moving portraits and a highly personal sense of images. He brings us a life intensely lived.”
—John Ralston Saul, one of Canada’s leading men of letters
“Yosef Wosk is a brave, passionate pilgrim. Fasten your safety belts and read him with eager focus and care.”
—Seymour Mayne, poet, publisher, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa
“I admire the way Wosk explores emotion with honesty and rigour, and transposes his personal quest onto the exotic landscapes.”
—Evelyn Lau, former poet laureate for the City of Vancouver
“A wonderful book from the best kind of human. He is a brilliant original: wise, compassionate, curious.”
—Dr. Huw Lewis-Jones, Arctic exploration leader and author of The Writer’s Map
Yosef Wosk’s parents fled persecution in Eastern Europe prior to World War II. Raised in Vancouver, Wosk studied in Israel, New York and Boston where he was the teaching assistant for Elie Wiesel. Recently, he has co-authored GIDAL: The Unusual Friendship of Yosef Wosk and Tim Gidal (2022), curated Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal (2020) and contributed the Afterword for Out of Hiding: Holocaust Literature of British Columbia (2022).
