Five More Minutes
The novel follows two childhood friends, Bnaya and Yoav, who grew up in a religious West Bank settlement.
Bnaya, a young Rabbi and family man, finds himself in the middle of arguments between the extremist “Hilltop Youth” and his more moderate neighbors in the settlement, between the demands of religion and everyday life, and between ignoring the Palestinians and acknowledging them, all while under threat of eviction from his home – something that motivates him to take action to stop the situation escalating out of control.
Yoav, a film student living in Tel Aviv, is making his first steps in the secular world. As a result of using narcotics, he re-experiences a traumatic event from his army service – an arrest that went wrong during which his friend the commander and a Palestinian terrorist were killed. He sets out on a quest to come to terms with his past. He visits the parents of the dead officer and, despite the danger, attempts to reach the Palestinian village where the arrest took place. There the two childhood friends, Bnaya and Yoav, will meet again after years of separation. The novel deals with the trauma of war and bereavement, and also offers a glimpse into the lifestyles of religious Jewish families in West Bank settlements and those of party-loving youngsters in Tel Aviv who don’t want to settle down.
An ambitious first novel drawing on the author’s intimate knowledge of two contrasting worlds.
-
“Yonatan Berg’s book dares to penetrate with an intimacy that is unbiased but not devoid of compassion, into an unexplored territory in Israeli literature – the settlements and the settlers … His prose presents a work that is of great cultural-social importance.”
-
“This will be a bestseller … An imposing structure … Why will it be a bestseller? Because of the cognitive abyss between the secular and the religious, because of the small details and because of the voyeuristic urges secular readers have when it comes to the "other" world … Another reason for the predictable popularity of this book is its relevance. There has been too little prose written here on the occupation from the point of view of the occupier. ”
-
“A delicate indictment, not of the political aspects of the settlements but, more profoundly, of this way of life and what it does to the soul.”