Back online, instead of focusing on the protests in Israel, or the forecasts for September or not even the Nine Days - not because of lack of consideration, but because my words are still looking for a proper shape to enter the real world. Instead, I would like to write about my latest literary discovery: Eshkol Nevo and its Homesick (translated by Sondra Silverston).
The author is the grandson of the former Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol and is teaching, among others, creative writing. I didn't know too much about him or his career before buying the book, driven by the double curiosity I always have when in a good bookstore in Israel: discovering a new author but also finding something new about the Israeli society.
Most part of the good Israeli pieces of literature are sociological accounts about the society and the people, in a country where history is always on the making. In other countries - I don't want to make nominations - you could have the luxury to meditate about love, time, friendship and relationship as absolute values - beyond time and geography. Based on the books I've read by now, I dare to say that Israeli literature is an example of producing quality works and creating a debate about eternal values under the pressure of events. The humans are changing and adjusting themselves in coordination or against the daily events, be it Rabin's death - the time frame of the book - or terrorist attacks.
The story of Amir and Noa is related with other stories of the people living in the building - all the accounts are mostly first person accounts of other stories. Their story is reflected and connected with other people's stories and they discover and abandon themselves through them. In this fragile world when your life is always under the threat of changes, you can't be alone and although you don't want to, you can't be alone. You need the others to re comfort yourself or they need you for a little piece of advice. You carry through the others your own stories and you are part of their stories as well. This is exactly the explanation of Modi's homesick: Amir's best friend present in the book by his backpacking stories from South America is longing for being home and for writing to somebody in his mother tongue. Noa's graduation project is about longing too. The Arab Saddiq is longing too for something his parents told him about and are longing about. Sima, the neighbor, is longing for a revival of her marriage, as his husband is hardly able to separate completly of his religious family whose comfort is longing too. The kid Yotam's family is also longing about his brother, Gidi, killed in Lebanon an event that dramatically disturbed the whole family universe. At the end, they will decide to leave for Australia and we can continue writing by ourselves their story of understanding the "homesickness".
The original title of the story, in Hebrew is: Arbaa baatim ve-gaagua - Four houses and longing, a sense kept in the German translation of the book: Vier Häuser und eine Sehnsucht, I prefer to the English choice.
What I appreciated about the book is the assumed neutrality role of the writer: you are presented histories and facts and connections. You are not offered political messages or any kind of subliminal messages. It is how a good piece of literature should be. A quality book recommendation for the summer.
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