Synopses & Reviews
This heart-warming, charming and clever first novel dips into the lives of each of the inhabitants of a village in Israel.
It is 1995 and Noa and Amir, a student couple, have decided to move in together. Noa is studying photography in Jerusalem and Amir is a psychology student in Tel Aviv. They choose a small apartment in a village in the hills, midway between the two cities.
Originally called El-Kastel, the village was emptied of its Arab inhabitants in 1948 and is now the home of Jewish immigrants from Kurdistan. Not far from the apartment lives a family grieving for their eldest son who was killed in Lebanon. The younger brother left behind, Yotam, forgotten by his parents, turns to Amir for support.
Further down the street, Saddiq watches the house while he works at a building site. He knows that this house is the one from which his family was driven by the Jews when he was a boy, and to which his mother still has a rusty key. Despite friendships that develop and lives that become entwined, tensions among this melting pot of characters seem to be rising to the surface.
This enchanting and irresistible novel offers us windows into the characters' lives. Each comes from somewhere different but we gradually see that there's much about them that's the same. Homesick is a beautiful and moving story about history, love, family and the true meaning of home.
Review
A deeply human book, suffused with desire and melancholy.Nevo has created an engrossing work. . . . This is a compelling novel which I never wanted to end. -- Julia Pascal
Review
The novel"s heartfelt bass note is the beauty and difficulty of human relationships, evoked with sympathy and an ear for the nuances of different voices which is as playful as it is precise.A warm, wise and sophisticated novel. I read it with much pleasure. -- Amos Oz, author of
Review
"Homesick is set in the mid-Nineties, just as hopes for peace were squashed by Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. Nevo is not a political writer, but he shows how Israel's troubles seep into the lives of his characters. Noa is inspired to take pictures of Palestinian families in front of homes from which they were expelled, but with few Arabs allowed into the country, she has to do with Romanians." Benjamin Moser, Harper's Magazine (Read the entire )
Synopsis
Moving from character to character, perspective to perspective, Homesick is a complex and moving portrait of parallel lives and failing love in a time of permanent war.
Synopsis
This remarkable, kaleidoscopic novel tells the fragmented stories of a group of women and men brought together by chance in a small neighborhood in the hills of Israel. It is 1995, and Amir, a young man studying psychology in Jerusalem, and his girlfriend Noa, studying photography in Tel Aviv, decide to move in together, choosing a tiny apartment midway between their two cities--a village that was forcibly emptied of its Arab inhabitants in 1948. Although the two students are only looking for a convenient place to spend time together, they find their new home to be no less complex a web of relationships than urban life: their landlords live on the other side of a paper-thin wall; the next-door neighbors have just lost their eldest son in Lebanon; and further down the street, a Palestinian construction worker named Saddiq is keeping a close watch on the house where his own family used to live.
About the Author
Eshkol Nevo was born in Jerusalem in 1971 and spent his childhood years in Israel and Detroit. He teaches creative writing at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Tel Aviv University, Sapir College, and the Open University. He has published a collection of short stories, a book of nonfiction, and two novels, both of which have been bestsellers in Israel.Sondra Silverston has lived in Israel since 1970. Among her translations are fiction by contemporary Israeli authors Eshkol Nevo, Etgar Keret, Savyon Liebrecht, and Aharon Megged.