Description
Book SynopsisIn the summer of 1967, not long after the Six Day War, three young Palestinian men ventured into the town of Ramla in Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes, from which they and their families had been driven out nearly twenty years earlier. One cousin had the door slammed in his face, one found that his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir, was met at the door by a young woman named Dalia, who invited him in...
This poignant encounter is the starting point for the story of two families - one Arab, one Jewish - which spans the fraught modern history of the region. In the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard of his childhood home, Bashir sees a symbol of occupation; Dalia, who arrived in 1948 as an infant with her family, as a fugitive from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. Both are inevitably swept up in the fates of their people and the stories of their lives form a microcosm o
Trade Review
At a time when peace seems remote and darkness deepens, this lucid, humane, hopeful book shines like a ray of light * The Times *
A superb, sustained piece of narrative non-fiction * The Sunday Times *
Extraordinary... Tolan's narrative provides a much needed human dimension to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... a highly readable and evocative history * Washington Post *
Reads like a novel... an informed take for anyone interested in the human stories behind a conflict * New Statesman *
A fascinating and highly absorbing account full of warmth, compassion and hope * Scotland on Sunday *
