2012 Puddly Awards
 
 
Follow us on TwitterFollow us on FacebookFollow us on TumblrSubscribe to RSS


Recently Viewed clear list


Interviews | January 24, 2012

Jill Owens: IMG Ben Marcus: The Powells.com Interview



Ben MarcusBen Marcus's books The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women were considered "experimental" fiction because of his unconventional use of... Continue »
  1. $18.17 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    The Flame Alphabet

    Ben Marcus 9780307379375

spacer
Free Shipping!

Martyrs' Crossing

by Amy Wilentz

Martyrs' Crossing Cover

 

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

“SOPHISTICATED AND SUSPENSEFUL . . . TAUTLY WRITTEN . . . Wilentz knows the world she writes about very well, and her descriptions have a solid specificity that lends authority to her fiction.”

–The New York Times Book Review

“At a closed Israeli checkpoint, Marina, a Palestinian mother, clutches her ailing boy, desperate for access to Jerusalem and its doctors. When a young Israeli soldier waits too long before deciding to disobey orders, a martyr is born. Thus begins a graceful, painful, illuminating novel of the Middle East. . . . [Wilentzs] prose tugs at the reader. . . . The characters are magnetic. . . . [This] is a very human tale of regrets, revenge, and the elusive nature of absolution.”

–Entertainment Weekly

“SO PRECISE, SO STARTLING, SO UNFORGETTABLE. . . . These characters are all pawns of history and politics, but Wilentz makes them live.”

–Los Angeles Times

“MAGNIFICENT . . . Wilentz writes with a prose style reminiscent of The New Yorkers highest ambitions: crystalline, pure, faultlessly communicative. . . . Like the best documentaries, Martyrs Crossing allows us unprecedented access to a little-understood and often misrepresented part of the world.”

–Chicago Tribune

“A BRILLIANTLY RESEARCHED MEDIDATION ON THE CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST . . . Martyrs Crossing matches Damascus Gate in the quality of research and the mass of intriguing characters–and yet it remains a lean thriller.”

–The New York Observer

Review:

"A graceful, painful, illuminating novel of the Middle East....[This] is a very human tale of regrets, revenge, and the elusive nature of absolution." Entertainment Weekly

Review:

"So precise, so startling, so unforgettable....These characters are all pawns of history and politics, but Wilentz make them live." Los Angeles Times

Review:

"Powerful and poetic...[Wilentz's] storytelling propels you headfirst into another world." Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief

Review:

"With intensity and skill, Amy Wilentz manages to show us the internal life of characters who are usually seen as journalistic subjects, those struggling in the complex and highly charged world of the Palestinians and Israelis. A deeply personal and tragic incident is at the center of this novel. The backdrop is one of political and social conflict, but the subject turns out to be the wider one of being human — of the difficulty of enduring loss and of trying to live by one's beliefs when all the world seems to be against you." Susan Minot, author of Lust & Other Stories

Review:

"The strength of Martyrs' Crossing...[is] its authentic and persuasive portraits of people trying to find their way through, and possibly past, the traps of history." Time

Synopsis:

From an award-winning journalist, a gripping first novel follows a Palestinian mother and a young Israeli guard through the very heart of the world's most volatile conflict--the crisis in the Middle East.

Synopsis:

By Amy Wilentz, the acclaimed author of the prize-winning The Rainy Season, Martyrs' Crossing tells a stunning story of love, fear, divided loyalties, ruined friendships, and personal sacrifice — against a backdrop of raging war in the Holy Land.

One rainy night at a Jerusalem checkpoint, Israeli Lieutenant Ari Doron is ordered to refuse passage to a young Palestinian mother and her sick boy. The incident leads to a series of riots, and Doron finds himself pulled into the bitter political aftermath as battles and bus bombs explode around him.

He is drawn to Marina, the boy's American-born mother. And though she is on the other side of the bloody struggle, she finds herself thinking of Doron as "her soldier." In another place, at another time, they might have been lovers, but here their story moves toward a tragic conclusion with the kind of inevitability that war imposes.

Marina's father, an eminent Boston heart specialist and an outspoken Palestinian intellectual, is also sucked into the conflict he thought he had left behind long ago. Now, back in the streets of his youth, he must choose whether to support his old comrades as they manipulate his grandson's story in an ugly propaganda campaign, or break with them and wreck his last remaining childhood friendship.

Caught in history's terrible catastrophe, all three become pawns for larger, inescapable forces.

Martyrs' Crossing is a poignant story of the ambiguities of war — of inarticulate longing and broken vows — set in the turbulence of Israel and the West Bank.

About the Author

Amy Wilentz won the PENMartha Albrand Prize for nonfiction and the Whiting Writers Award, and was a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1990. She is the author of The Rainy Season and has written for The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. She was the Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker from 1995 to 1997. She lives in New York City with her husband and three sons.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780345449832
Author:
Wilentz, Amy
Publisher:
Ballantine Books
Location:
New York
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Mothers and sons
Subject:
Children
Subject:
Fathers and daughters
Subject:
Americans
Subject:
Soldiers
Subject:
Political fiction
Subject:
Jerusalem
Subject:
Domestic fiction
Subject:
Palestinian Americans
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Copyright:
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Series:
Ballantine Reader's Circle
Series Volume:
3
Publication Date:
20020131
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
336
Dimensions:
8.30x5.53x.76 in. .58 lbs.

Other books you might like

  1. $2.95 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  2. $4.43 Google eBooks add to wish list

    A Summer Life

    Gary Soto 9781611682014
  3. $5.99 Google eBooks add to wish list

    Iqbal

    Francesco D'Adamo 9781439106785
  4. $8.99 Google eBooks add to wish list
  5. $9.99 Google eBooks add to wish list

    Where the Heart Is: A Novel

    Billie Letts 9780759522886
  6. $8.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    Nervous Conditions

    Tsitsi Dangarembga 9781878067777

Related Aisles

Martyrs' Crossing Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$4.95 In Stock
Product details 336 pages Ballantine Books - English 9780345449832 Reviews:
"Review" by , "A graceful, painful, illuminating novel of the Middle East....[This] is a very human tale of regrets, revenge, and the elusive nature of absolution."
"Review" by , "So precise, so startling, so unforgettable....These characters are all pawns of history and politics, but Wilentz make them live."
"Review" by , "Powerful and poetic...[Wilentz's] storytelling propels you headfirst into another world."
"Review" by , "With intensity and skill, Amy Wilentz manages to show us the internal life of characters who are usually seen as journalistic subjects, those struggling in the complex and highly charged world of the Palestinians and Israelis. A deeply personal and tragic incident is at the center of this novel. The backdrop is one of political and social conflict, but the subject turns out to be the wider one of being human — of the difficulty of enduring loss and of trying to live by one's beliefs when all the world seems to be against you."
"Review" by , "The strength of Martyrs' Crossing...[is] its authentic and persuasive portraits of people trying to find their way through, and possibly past, the traps of history."
"Synopsis" by , From an award-winning journalist, a gripping first novel follows a Palestinian mother and a young Israeli guard through the very heart of the world's most volatile conflict--the crisis in the Middle East.
"Synopsis" by , By Amy Wilentz, the acclaimed author of the prize-winning The Rainy Season, Martyrs' Crossing tells a stunning story of love, fear, divided loyalties, ruined friendships, and personal sacrifice — against a backdrop of raging war in the Holy Land.

One rainy night at a Jerusalem checkpoint, Israeli Lieutenant Ari Doron is ordered to refuse passage to a young Palestinian mother and her sick boy. The incident leads to a series of riots, and Doron finds himself pulled into the bitter political aftermath as battles and bus bombs explode around him.

He is drawn to Marina, the boy's American-born mother. And though she is on the other side of the bloody struggle, she finds herself thinking of Doron as "her soldier." In another place, at another time, they might have been lovers, but here their story moves toward a tragic conclusion with the kind of inevitability that war imposes.

Marina's father, an eminent Boston heart specialist and an outspoken Palestinian intellectual, is also sucked into the conflict he thought he had left behind long ago. Now, back in the streets of his youth, he must choose whether to support his old comrades as they manipulate his grandson's story in an ugly propaganda campaign, or break with them and wreck his last remaining childhood friendship.

Caught in history's terrible catastrophe, all three become pawns for larger, inescapable forces.

Martyrs' Crossing is a poignant story of the ambiguities of war — of inarticulate longing and broken vows — set in the turbulence of Israel and the West Bank.

spacer
spacer
  • back to top
Follow us on...


Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.