Cover image for book

It seems a cliché to say that the land itself is a character, but this is an Israeli book through and through, even though the characters also travel into Lebanon and throughout the Americas. But because it’s Lavie Tidhar, it never falls entirely into that cliché, and in fact a character says towards the end of the book that the stories “were uniquely Israeli” and yet “they could have happened anywhere”.

It’s a noir, with characters fully fleshed-out, making bad choices for believable reasons, but all rooted in a specific place and time, brought to life in countless tiny details. I recognise the Israel of the 90s and 2000s, the Israel of my friends that I saw a little of, and I struggled to put the book down.

It’s also clearly a book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with an Israeli talking to a Palestinian, each about “their land”, and meaning the same land. The chaos of the war in Lebanon also makes an appearance, with characters ricocheting through and off it. It’s less overtly political than some of Lavie Tidhar’s other work, Unholy Land in particular, but both rage and love are woven throughout the story as they are through the land itself.

Things just keep happening — human lives.

🖼️  Cover image from publisher’s website