Guy Laron’s challenging new book, The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East, is well worth reading even though Laron, a lecturer in international relations at Hebrew University, focuses too much on the war’s international context and, at times, relies too heavily upon unsubstantiated speculation
Bulgaria. How little thought I had ever given to Bulgaria, but here it is in the vivid, fast-paced, fascinating new novel The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova. Author of the best-selling novel The Historian, Kostova is a writer who knows how to keep you in suspense, to frighten and amaze you, all while building characters whose fate will matter to you more and more as she reveals a whole country, its history, its tragedy, its politics, its scenery and its sad beauty.
The notion that Germany has special responsibilities due to the Holocaust influences Merkel’s outlook on the world significantly. But this is not to say everything is rosy.
A double myth about Yitzhak Rabin has prevailed since his assassination in 1995. For the Israeli right, his peacemaking attempts were and still are evidence of traitorous subversion. For the Israeli left, and especially to much of the outside world, his memory is crowned with rare nobility.
Leonardo Padura’s Heretics is a remarkable book. Padura, who is certainly the most prominent of a small number of Jewish Cuban authors, might also be the most famous writer in Cuba today. Best known in this country for his Inspector Mario Conde detective series…
King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking Around the World / Fress: Bold Flavors from a Jewish Kitchen / Matzo: 35 Recipes for Passover and All Year Long
Suleiman’s new book, The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in 20th-Century France, explores Némirovsky’s tragic career and the deteriorating civil society of pre-World War II France that first nurtured the writer and then ultimately turned on her. Drawing on parallels to her own life, Suleiman makes of the story a meditation on allegiance, foreignness and assimilation—one with uncanny echoes for today’s politics.
When Bob Dylan became the first songwriter to win the Nobel Prize in Literature last October, the internet erupted with reactions ranging from euphoria to dismay.
Until the 1980s, women were a small minority among Hebrew writers. There was Russian-born Rahel Bluwstein (1890–1931), considered the “founding mother” of modern Hebrew poetry by women. Esther Raab (1894–1981) was the first native-born Israeli woman poet, principally known for her rich use of modern Hebrew.
The earliest comedy I remember with any clarity was created by a famous tragic clown, a circus performer whose painted mouth was perpetually turned down in a frown. Left out of the spotlight, he carried a sledgehammer and ran after the other clowns who wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
Nine years have passed since the mysterious death of Ashraf Marwan, the senior Egyptian government official who volunteered to spy for Israel’s Mossad. Marwan remains at the center of a bitter controversy over why the October 1973 attack that launched the Yom Kippur War took Israel by surprise.
