Synopses & Reviews
Yael, Avishag, and Lea grow up together in a tiny, dusty Israeli village, attending a high school made up of caravan classrooms, passing notes to each other to alleviate the universal boredom of teenage life. When they are conscripted into the army, their lives change in unpredictable ways, influencing the women they become and the friendship that they struggle to sustain. Yael trains marksmen and flirts with boys. Avishag stands guard, watching refugees throw themselves at barbed-wire fences. Lea, posted at a checkpoint, imagines the stories behind the familiar faces that pass by her day after day. They gossip about boys and whisper of an ever more violent world just beyond view. They drill, constantly, for a moment that may never come. They live inside that single, intense second just before danger erupts.
In a relentlessly energetic and arresting voice marked by humor and fierce intelligence, Shani Boianjiu creates an unforgettably intense world, capturing that unique time in a young woman's life when a single moment can change everything.
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Review
“Remarkable….Part of this impressive book’s power is that it manages to re-create and rupture that numbness, war’s tedium and the damage it does to memory, intimacy, thought and affection. At a time when so many of America’s best writers seem to be in retreat from realism, championing a return to genre fiction (zombies and ghosts, comic-book characters and thrillers), Boianjiu’s bracing honesty is tonic. It’s a tribute to Boianjiu’s artistry and humanity that she portrays those on both sides of the barbed wire as loved and feared. The People of Forever Are Not Afraid is a fierce and beautiful portrait of the damage done by war.&rdquo The Washington Post
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"A dark, riveting window into the mind-state of Israel's younger generation, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid marks the arrival of a brilliant writer." Wall Street Journal
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ldquo;With its blend of brutal hilarity and heart-stopping anguish, this is a brilliant debut novel.” The Boston Globe
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“[Boianjiu’s] voice is distinct. It’s confident, raw, amusing — a lot like her women.” The New York Times
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“Stunning…[a] beautifully rendered account of the absurdities and pathos inherent to everyday life in Israel.” Los Angeles Review of Books
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“Boianjiu’s searing debut…draws from the author’s own experiences to render the absurdities of life and love on the precipice of violence.” Vogue
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“In her riveting debut novel, 25-year-old Shani Boianjiu gives a rare insider glimpse at what it’s like to be a girl coming of age in the famously fierce Israeli Defense Forces.” Marie Claire
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“In this Bildungsroman, life in the army initiates a metamorphosis from girl to woman….Boianjiu’s depiction of…the psyches of these young women is fascinating….The prose [reads] alternately like a nightmare and a dream, but this feverish indecision is what gives it its power.” The Economist
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“That one debut novel to get excited about.” New York Magazine
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“Eye-opening and brutally honest....In this gripping debut, [Boianjiu] weaves together the familiar coming-of-age milestones such as sexual initiation, the fierce bonds of friendship and the need for independence with the shocking realities of military life — even beyond the battlefield.” Bookpage
Review
“The extraordinarily gifted Shani Boianjiu has published a first novel that is tense and taut as a thriller yet romantic and psychologically astute….Boianjiu writes with clarity about atrocity and the absurdity of endless war, but it’s her tender acceptance of human frailty that ultimately makes this novel so engrossing.” More Magazine
Review
“The much-anticipated debut novel from 25-year-old Shani Boianjiu zigzags between the stories of three high-school friends, Yael, Avishag, and Lea, as they leave their small village on the Lebanese border to take up posts in the Israeli army…glimmers of humor and insight flash brightly in what is a brutally dark novel." The Daily Beast
Review
"In her complex, gritty first novel, Boianjiu portrays young women drafted into the Israeli army as they come of age. This is a great choice for literary fiction readers who can appreciate a thoroughly distinctive narrative voice.” Library Journal, starred review
Review
“[An] excellent debut novel…like Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? meets…The Things They Carried. Irreverent, sometimes touching and often deeply weird, we fell in love with Boianjiu’s voice from the first page. Bottom line? It sucked us in and carried us off at gunpoint.” Flavorwire.com
Review
“Boianjiu’s debut novel chronicles the gritty, restless experiences of three young women during their compulsory service in the Israeli Defense Forces…The bold, matter-of-fact narrative…[mirrors] the complexity of a landscape in perpetual transition.” Booklist
Review
“It is incredibly rare and spectacular to find an author who possesses the literary talent to transport us so completely and persuasively to an utterly foreign realm. First time novelist, 24-year-old Shani Boianjiu, has performed such a feat in The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, her disturbing and provocative new book about the traumatic experiences of three young Israeli girls serving in the Israeli Defense Forces.” The Jewish Journal
About the Author
Shani Boianjiu was born in Jerusalem in 1987 and grew up in the Galilee. She served in the Israeli Defense Forces for two years. She graduated from Harvard in 2011. Her debut novel has been published or will soon be published in 23 countries. It has been longlisted for the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and selected as one of the ten best fiction titles of 2012 by the Wall Street Journal. She is the youngest recipient ever of the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 award. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Zoetrope, Vice, the Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, Dazed and Confused, the Guardian and NPR.Com. She lives in Israel.