Description
Book Synopsis1983. A kibbutz on the bank of the river Jordan. After a fateful protest march and on the eve of her wedding, a young woman leaves for England, never to return. Decades later, her daughter begins to uncover the devastating reality of her mother's childhood in a social experiment that discarded family life in favour of the collective, but can the truth ever be recovered? Spanning the years from 1967–2010, Night Swimming in the Jordan dives into what it means to grow up in someone else’s utopia, where the threat of war is ever present and relationships are coloured by ideology.
Trade ReviewNight Swimming in the Jordan is a beautiful, compelling and important novel, which explores the political landscape of 1970s Israel through the story of a young girl in a Kibbutz community. A heart-breaking love story told with a powerful sense of time and place, it shows the effect of dogma and religious conflict on individuals and families. In a world that seems torn apart by difference, this novel is both necessary and timely.— Sophie Pierce, writer and broadcaster;This is a deeply satisfying read, an engaging depiction of a growing girl’s world infused with finely textured detail. The reader is plunged into Abbie’s life in the kibbutz, her first love affairs and her dawning realisation of political differences. It is a coming of age novel, a multi-generational saga, an exploration of the way in which ideology and nationalism can define individual lives. The cast of Night Swimming are so fully realised you can feel their blood flowing in your veins, share in their suffering and celebrate their small victories.— Anna Lunk, author of Amie’s Rest.
