Ranen Omer-Sherman
By Ranen Omer-Sherman
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Culture The Diamond Setter: A Gloriously Immersive Journey Into Modern Israel
The Diamond Setter By Moshe Sakal Translated by Jessica Cohen Other Press, 304 pages, $15.95 If you enjoy richly plotted intergenerational stories inspired by true events, Moshe Sakal’s “The Diamond Setter” offers bountiful pleasures. Born in Tel Aviv and now a resident of Jaffa, Sakal is the scion of a Syrian-Egyptian Jewish family whose colorful…
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Culture Amos Oz, Israel’s Greatest Writer, Delivers Another Masterpiece at Age 77
Judas By Amos Oz, translated by Nicholas de Lange Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 320 pages, $25 Considering how often fellow Israelis have called him a “traitor” (from his early involvement in Peace Now to his recent comparison of violent West Bank settlers to neo-Nazis, which earned him death threats), it should hardly surprise anyone that Amos…
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Culture Etgar Keret Finds Redemption
The Seven Good Years: A Memoir By Etgar Keret Riverhead Books, 192 pages, $26.95 For readers entranced by earlier encounters with Etgar Keret’s enchantingly unsettling portrayals of the absurdities of the human condition, the appearance of his memoir is surely cause for celebration. A recent collection of stories, “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door,” was…
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Culture David Grossman Creates Yet Another Wrenching Masterpiece
For readers left feeling bereft after David Grossman’s portrayal of the relation between the life of a family and the tragic corrosiveness of Israeli militarism in “To the End of the Land,” here is an audaciously unorthodox work that may serve as an emotional sequel of sorts. If we assumed that Grossman could hardly delve…
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Culture Journeying Back to the Land of Amos Oz
Between Friends By Amos Oz Translator Sondra Silverston Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 192 pages, $24 As historian Derek Penslar has remarked, the kibbutz is “one of the hallmarks of the Zionist project, and although it appears to have reached its end as a generative and innovative force within Israeli society, the kibbutz’s historical grandeur and significance…
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Culture Mark Helprin’s Politics Doesn’t Get in Way of Prose
In Sunlight And In Shadow By Mark Helprin Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 705 pages, $28 Readers indifferent to Mark Helprin’s strident neoconservatism are often won over by Mark Helprin the literary writer — his energetic prose, his intricate plotting, the dreamlike images in novels such as “Refiner’s Fire,” “A Soldier of the Great War” and “Freddy…
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News Portraying Inner Conflict of Israeli-Arabs
Second Person Singular By Sayed Kashua Translated by Mitch Ginsburg Grove Press, 352 pages, $25 Sayed Kashua has built an impressive career exposing the porous and impenetrable, farcical and tragic demarcations between Israel’s Jews and Arabs. Readers of his weekend column for Haaretz may recall a caustic fable titled “Cinderella (Herzl Disappears at Midnight)” in…
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Culture A Zionist Heroine in Her Own Mind
My Russian Grandmother and her American Vacuum Cleaner: A Family Memoir By Meir Shalev, translated by Evan Fallenberg Schocken, 224 pages, $25.95 Few writers have a warmer place in the hearts of Israeli readers than Meir Shalev. His upbringing in Nahalal, Israel’s first moshav, inspired “The Blue Mountain,” one of the top best-sellers in Israeli…
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