Dinner at the Center of the Earth, by Nathan Englander (2017)
Dinner at the Center of the Earth
addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from many points of view and from
various time period between 2002 and 2014.
First, we have Prisoner Z, an idealistic American Jew who moved to
Israel to attend college in the mid-1990s.
He was recruited by Mossad, and as a result of an operation involving a
Palestinian businessmen, finds himself in a secret prison deep in the Negev.
Then
we have the General (unnamed, but clearly based on Ariel Sharon). The General was responsible for putting
Prisoner Z in the prison. Prisoner Z
writes regular letters to the General pleading his case, unaware that the
General is in a coma and is dying in a hospital.
The General is, apparently, the only person who knows (other that the
guard), that Prisoner Z is imprisoned.
There’s
Farid, the mysterious Palestinian businessman, who likes yachting and befriends
Prisoner Z. Farid’s business supports
his brother’s terrorist acts in Gaza.
When the Israeli’s bomb his brother’s house, however, Farid becomes
emotionally involved it the violence occurring in the conflict.
Before
he is caught, Prisoner Z takes up with an Italian waitress in Paris. As a spy, he has loose lips and confides in
her.
Finally,
in prison, he is guarded by the unnamed Guard, whose mother, Ruthi, was the
General’s trusted personal assistant.
Both the Guard and Ruthi as prisoners in their emotional commitment and
responsibilities to their charges.
This
was not an easy book to read, and it took me about 100 pages before I began to
care about the characters. Each character contemplates the violence occurring between the Israelis and Palestinians, in the context of their complex interdependency upon each other.
Read: March 31, 2018
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