This is something I've been thinking of doing for a while, but the truth is, I haven't been in the headspace for it in the past two and a half years. But I've noticed that over the past few months, I have been gravitating toward songs written after the Yom Kippur War, and I've realized that this is a period I want to dive into and understand better. So, with the help of Claude, here is a list of Israeli books I intend to read and write about, starting in mid-July, around once a month. I think it will be much more interesting to read along with me, and I would love to hear your perspective, either in the comments or by email.
1. Touch the Water, Touch the Wind - Amos Oz (1973*) trans. Nicholas de Lange - 192 pages. A Jewish mathematics teacher escapes the Nazis in Poland and mysteriously resurfaces years later in Israel, where he has become a legendary figure. His wife, left behind, makes her own separate journey to find him. A surrealist, dreamlike novel that moves between Europe and Israel, blending folklore, fantasy, and history into a meditation on survival, memory, and the impossible dream of escape.
*Note that this book was written and published before the Yom Kippur War.
2. The Lover - A.B. Yehoshua (1977) trans. Philip Simpson - ~250 pages. A middle-aged garage owner in Haifa becomes obsessed with finding the young man who had an affair with his wife and then vanished during the Yom Kippur War. Told through the alternating voices of five characters - including a teenage girl and a young Arab mechanic - it is a fractured, intimate portrait of Israeli society in the war's immediate wake.
3. A Late Divorce - A.B. Yehoshua (1982) trans. Hillel Halkin - 364 pages. An Israeli man returns from America during Passover week to divorce his institutionalized wife, setting off a chain reaction through his adult children's lives. Told from multiple perspectives over nine turbulent days, it is a claustrophobic, darkly comic portrait of a family - and a society - coming apart at the seams.
4. Mr. Mani - A.B. Yehoshua (1990) trans. Hillel Halkin - ~370 pages. Five conversations spanning 150 years, told in reverse chronological order - from present-day Israel back to 19th century Athens - each featuring only one side of the dialogue. Through six generations of the Mani family, Yehoshua traces the deepest roots of Jewish identity in the Middle East, weaving together war, suicide, and the recurring pull of historical fate.
5. To the End of the Land - David Grossman (2008) trans. Jessica Cohen - 592 pages. When her son is sent back to the front for a military offensive, an Israeli mother cannot bear to wait at home for news. She sets off on a long hike through the Galilee with an old friend and former lover, talking obsessively about her son as if telling his story will keep him alive. Moving back and forth through thirty years of shared history, it is a novel about motherhood, friendship, and the unbearable cost of living in a country always at war.
If I keep this up, I intend to include different genres and voices in the future. Suggestions are always welcome. See you in July!
