On the Fault Line Sayed Kashua’s fascinating new novel By Laura Phillips Palestinian Israeli writer Sayed Kashua’s third novel Exposure is pungent with fear of the annihilation of the self by a hostile and mocking society and … Continue reading
The Past in Some Good Parts Laura Phillips on Gabriela Avigur-Rotem’s novel Heatwave and Crazy Birds is a novel of huge ambition and scope, thematically and formally. It tackles the archetypal Jewish and Israeli themes of exile, … Continue reading
Laura Phillips on Egyptian Novelist Bahaa Taher In Love with Isis Egyptian novelist Bahaa Taher takes the long view. Born in Cairo in 1935, Taher, who won the first International Prize for Arabic Fiction, has a postgraduate diploma in History from the … Continue reading
His Way! Laura Phillips on Israeli Yoram Kaniuk In a teasing note at the start of Yoram Kaniuk’s Life on Sandpaper, he says: “It isn’t entirely incorrect to call this book a work of fiction, despite its being an account … Continue reading
TOBY LICHTIG The Lost Story Schurr, extra meta-fiction The anglosphere’s appetite for Hebrew literature is hearty. According to Todd Hasak-Lowy, translator of Asaf Schurr’s novel Motti, over five hundred full-length Hebrew books have been published in English over … Continue reading
Absent Souls Laura Phillips on a remarkable novel by Lebanese Iman Humayadan Younes Iman Humayadan Younes’s fiction gives voice to characters inhabited by absence. This absence precludes any sense of belonging, either to the place they live in, or with … Continue reading
Deadly Seeking Employment Review By Toby Lichtig Despite some rays of economic hope, underlined by the recent construction boom in Ramallah, employment remains a precarious thing in the West Bank. Five years ago, things were even worse. Incensed at the … Continue reading
The Córdoba Connection By Lewis Gropp The two greatest thinkers in Moorish Spain were the Muslim Ibn Rushd and the Jew Moses Maimonides. In his film Out of Córdoba, Jacob Bender traces the life stories of both men as … Continue reading
The Village of Oz Review By Laura Phillips Story telling is bred in Amos Oz’s bones. In his remarkable memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, he describes his time as a “poor Scheherazade”, fending off playground bullies … Continue reading
Khirbet Khizeh Revisited By Ian Black In September 1949, a few months after the end of Israel’s war of independence, a young writer published a novella that has become associated, more than any other work of Hebrew literature, with the … Continue reading