Omer Friedlander, The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land (2022) Random House This effort stands apart from the rest of the books considered here for one particular reason: you can be sure that nothing is lost in translation, since it was written originally in English. Friedlander, an Israeli-Canadian writer, received the Association of Jewish Libraries 2023 Jewish Fiction Award for this remarkable debut collection of short stories.
the only daughter of a Jewish family with deep roots in Italy, as she prepares for her bat mitzvah while grappling with questions of identity, personal turmoil, and loneliness. At the outset, Rachele’s father has been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and the precarity of his health looms over her world. Meanwhile, just before Christ- mas, Rachele is cast as the Madonna in a school play, in which her father forbids her from performing. As the story unfolds, Rachele is caught between
Across its 11 stories Friedlander brings together stark vignettes from contemporary Israeli society. His characters are colourful and compelling, even when they sometimes have unappealing qualities, and come from all sectors of Israeli society. There is also an air of the fable to his literary style, each story imbued with a kind of dark humour, underscored by humanity. Particular standouts in the collection include the opening story “Jaffa Oranges,” about an elderly man who made his living selling oranges, but who harbours a shameful secret about his business’ origins; “Checkpoint,” in which a left-wing activist and mother of a soldier who was killed in Gaza in 2014 films soldiers at checkpoints in the West Bank; and “The Sephardi Survivor,” where two boys recruit a stranger to pretend to be their grandfather for Holocaust Memorial Day at school.
clashing factions attempting to guide her understanding of herself. The novel is beautifully written, and Yehoshua’s prose is vividly evocative. An interesting theme which Yehoshua examines through- out the book is that of “play-acting,” either as a member of another religion or as more religious, to explore the impact of living in a predominantly Christian country on one’s Jewish identity. Yehoshua once (in)famously criticized Judaism outside of Israel as inauthentic, stating that “if you do not live in Israel… your Jewish identity has no meaning at all.” With this in mind, that he sets his novel in a Catholic country acts as a complex thematic undercurrent to the novel. Yehoshua weaves in several interesting subplots, such as Rachele’s ski trip on Christmas, her fascination with a book her former teach- er wants her to read, her relationship with her bat mitzvah teacher Rabbi Azoulay—who has come from Israel to teach in the commun- ity—and the pregnancy of her dear pet dog. The Only Daughter is a beautifully layered work of fiction, reminding readers why Yehoshua has figured so importantly in Israeli literature.
Meir Shalev, A Pigeon and a Boy (2009, translated by Evan Fallenberg) Schocken
Just weeks before Israel celebrated Yom ha-Atzmaut, we lost one of its greatest writers: a son of 1948 born in the wake of the War of Independence, just weeks after Israel became a country. That his life is bookended by milestone moments in Israel’s first 75 years feels somehow poetic. On a personal note, I have a par- ticular soft spot for Shalev as this book was my entry point into Israeli literature as part of a course taught at McGill by Prof. Yael Halevi-Wise.
David Grossman, More Than I Love My Life (2021, translated by Jessica Cohen) Knopf
The recipient of the 2018 Israel Prize is among Israel’s most notable current writers. His latest novel is a masterful exploration of the complexity of familial re- lationships—especially between mothers and daughters—and legacy of trauma. Grossman’s story centres around Gili, a 39-year-old filmmaker. Having been raised by her father (Rafael) and abandoned by her mother (Nina), at the novel’s beginning, the most meaningful maternal presence in Gili’s life is that
Shalev’s most acclaimed novel (it received both the National Jewish Book Award and Israel’s Brenner Award) takes its title from a line in Bialik’s poem At The Gate —an allusion to the book’s central theme of the quest for a home. The novel weaves together an enigmatic love story set in 1948 of a woman and a pigeon-handler, and a story set some 50 years later of Yair, an Israeli tour guide who specializes in bird-watching trips. The interwoven narratives come together in a dazzling climax at novel’s end. Containing elements of magic realism, Shalev’s beautiful language and intricate storytelling create a thought-provoking and mesmerising read. A. B. Yehoshua, The Only Daughter (2023, translated by Stuart Schoffman) HarperVia We lost another giant of Israeli literature in 2022. Yet, it seems, Ye- hoshua has not finished publishing yet. This year saw the release of his first posthumous novel, a poignant coming-of-age story set in Italy at the turn of the millennium, exploring themes of diasporic Jewish identity and Jewish-gentile relationships. It follows Rachele Luzzato,
of her grandmother Vera, Nina’s mother and Rafael’s stepmother (the family dynamic here is complicated ). Vera came to Israel in the 1950s, a survivor of the notorious Yugoslav labour camp at Goli Otok, where she was tortured for some years. At Vera’s 90th birthday, Nina makes a surprising appearance and a shocking revelation. This leads the quartet of Vera, Rafael, Gili, and Nina on a trip to Croatia to visit Goli Otok and to confront the past. Grossman’s writing style takes on a cinematic quality as the story unfolds, with line breaks acting as scene breaks and transitions as the ‘camera’ shifts between past and present. This narrative tool is a fascinating way of showing Gili’s wariness of getting too close to her own story. She acts as a film documentarian, preferring to remain at a distance to safely observe and protect herself from pain. This is a deeply moving novel, and a compelling look at the ties which connect us to loved ones, even those who have hurt us in the past. n
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