Levantine Fantasy
For over two years, Michael Lev, an eccentric boy from Safed with supernatural powers, and Mona, an orphaned Arab girl, love one another. But when Mona disappears mysteriously, Michael is unable to discover whether she is dead or alive. For the next forty years, he lives in the shadow of this great love, which causes a rift in his marriage. Then, after his wife dies, Mona – now an American researcher – comes to Israel and the lovers meet again.
But the novel is also peopled by other lively characters and stories which shape this very Israeli life story- Michael`s mother, who came to Israel on foot from Iraq, losing her father on the journey; Michael`s Ashkenazi father who fell in love with her; a Lithuanian shoemaker and Holocaust survivor who gets murdered; Izzy, a young woman from Marseilles, constantly on the brink of insanity, and more. They all tell the tale of Israel from different vantage points, and chronicle the tensions between native Israelis and Holocaust refugees, Arabs and Jews, and immigrants within the neighborhoods.
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“ You'd never guess this is what Buchan can do, just as you`d never guess that he has no reservations when it comes to transgressing boundaries. His shy appearance manages to conceal the storms that rage in his soul... huge, wild, uncontrollable storms. ”