Defending the world's only Jewish state

 

Rare book. Good condition. $30 including postage anywhere in Australia

Hilarious and wise short stories from the Middle East

 

Mint condition. PB. 208pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Classic warped and wonderful stories from a genius (The New York Times) and master storyteller.

Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Etgar Keret's stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. As with the best writers of fiction, hilarity and anguish are the twin pillars of his work. Keret covers a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain - from a father's first lesson to his boy to a standoff between soldiers caught up in the Middle East conflict to a slice of life where nothing much happens.

An unconventional account of Israel

 

Very good condition. PB. 512pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE ECONOMIST

Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

An authoritative and deeply personal narrative history of the State of Israel, by one of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East today
 
Not since Thomas L. Friedman’s groundbreaking From Beirut to Jerusalem has a book captured the essence and the beating heart of the Middle East as keenly and dynamically as My Promised Land. Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Ari Shavit draws on interviews, historical documents, private diaries, and letters, as well as his own family’s story, illuminating the pivotal moments of the Zionist century to tell a riveting narrative that is larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and national, both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.

 
We meet Shavit’s great-grandfather, a British Zionist who in 1897 visited the Holy Land on a Thomas Cook tour and understood that it was the way of the future for his people; the idealist young farmer who bought land from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s to grow the Jaffa oranges that would create Palestine’s booming economy; the visionary youth group leader who, in the 1940s, transformed Masada from the neglected ruins of an extremist sect into a powerful symbol for Zionism; the Palestinian who as a young man in 1948 was driven with his family from his home during the expulsion from Lydda; the immigrant orphans of Europe’s Holocaust, who took on menial work and focused on raising their children to become the leaders of the new state; the pragmatic engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960s, in the only interview he ever gave; the zealous religious Zionists who started the settler movement in the 1970s; the dot-com entrepreneurs and young men and women behind Tel-Aviv’s booming club scene; and today’s architects of Israel’s foreign policy with Iran, whose nuclear threat looms ominously over the tiny country.

As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

A secret friendship between two woman - one Israeli and the other Palestinian

 

Very good condition. PB. 304pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The extraordinary true story of a secret forty-year friendship between two women who should have been bitter enemies. One: the beautiful Raymonda Tawil, the mother-in-law of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The other: Ruth Dayan, widow of General Moshe, the most celebrated Jewish general since Joshua and the man who spent much of his military career trying to kill Arafat.

The story of these two remarkable women's turbulent lives and their clandestine friendship, brilliantly told by award-winning author Anthony David, gives voice to Israelis and Palestinians caught up in the Middle East conflict. It also provides an insight into the Middle East's most influential leaders from two prominent women on either side of the conflict.

That Ruth and Raymonda continue their friendship to this day, despite the great danger it has put them in, is a testament not only to their affection for each other but also their joint commitment to seeing an end to the violence in the Middle East. Theirs is an unwavering faith in a future of peace, and An Improbable Friendship a beautiful story of reconciliation.

About the Author

Anthony David is the author of eight books, including his collaboration with Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh on his autobiography, Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life. David holds a Ph.D. in European History from the University of Chicago and currently lives in Jerusalem.

Prisoner X - The story of an Australian found dead in an Israeli prison

 

Excellent Condition. PB. 194pp.

The urgent phone call comes from behind the barbed wire.

'This is Ayalon prison,' says one of the guards urgently. 'Listen, he hanged himself, we need an ambulance.'

Prisoner X, just 34 years old, was slumped in a small bathroom, separated from his cell by a transparent door. Kept in one of the most technologically sophisticated solitary jail cells, at the behest of one of the world's most feared intelligence agencies, it is not easy to kill yourself. But Ben Zygier managed to do just that.

Did he work for Mossad? Was he also working for ASIO? Was he involved in the supply of false passports? Was he a whistle blower or double agent, or simply a young man way out of his depth?

In Prisoner X Rafael Epstein uncovers the intriguing story of a young Australian swept up in international intelligence.