Books Set in North America (New Hampshire); Europe (Vienna); and Asia (Israel)

Queen Esther, by John Irving (2025)

John Irving is a very quirky author.  While the title seems to refer to Esther, a Jewish orphan, adopted as a young teen to be a nanny to the daughter of the Winslow family, much of the book actually focuses on her son, Jimmy.  Esther was born in Vienna, Austria in 1905.  Soon after her birth, her family immigrated to the United States to escape the growing antisemitism.  Sadly, antisemitism was prevalent in the United States as well, and Esther's mother was murdered antisemites in Maine.  (Her father had died en route to the United States.)

The Winslows of New Hampshire provide Esther with a loving, but non-Jewish, family.  She grew up knowing of her Jewish background and values.  She is determined not to marry, but does agree to be the birth mother to Jimmy, who will be raised by Honor Winslow.  Esther longs to find her Jewish roots and becomes like the biblical Queen Esther and work to protect the Jews post-World War II.  Her life becomes mysterious and her Winslow family believes she has ties to Israel's Mossad.

Esther's son is curious about his birth mother and her ties to Judaism.  He also is determined to become a writer, so travels to Vienna, the place of his mother's birth.  At this point, the novel takes a turn and we meet all the quirky characters that are Irving's signature.

Irving's descriptions of live in New Hampshire are so New England.  His take on the formation of Israel are also so vivid and factual.  As he describes walking down the streets of Jerusalem, I felt as though I, too, were walking with Jimmy.  As Jimmy meets people, he has the opportunity to determine his own life course ~ is he the child of Esther, or of Honor?

I enjoyed the beginning and the ending of this novel, but got bogged down my much of the middle of the book.

3 Stars

Read: January 27, 2026

Books Set in Asia; Israel

10/7, by Lee Yaron (2024)

This book recounts 100 human stories about horror of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.  On that traumatic day, 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.  Yaron provides a human portrait of many of those killed.

On Shabbat October 7, 2023, which was also the last day of Sukkot and the beginning of Simhat Torah, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel.  Hamas indiscriminately massacred civilians in what became one of the worst terror attacks in recent history, and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Read:  September 25, 2025

5 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Jerusalem, Israel and Russia

A Woman in Jerusalem, by A. B. Yehoshua (2004)

Read: September 13, 2025

3 Stars

Books Set in Asia; Jerusalem, Israel

Second Person Singular, Sayed Kashua (2010)

This novel follows two Arab-Israeli men living in Jerusalem.  The first man, identified only as lawyer, is a hot-shot defense lawyer with a successful practice, a wife and a loving family.  His story is told in the third-person narrative.  The other man, a social-worker turned artist, tells his story in the first-person.  The novel goes back and forth between the two men as we learn about their lives and backgrounds.  They are conflicted about their lives as Arab-Israelis.

The lawyer is happy with his life until he purchases a book and finds a note in his wife's handwriting within the book's pages.  Convinced it is a love letter, he is determined to find the author of the note. a note in his wife's handwriting in a used book.  The social worker quits his job and becomes a caretaker for a severely injured and vegetative young Jewish man.  Their lives become intertwined as the lawyer become increasingly paranoid about the owner of the note written by his wife.

The novel explores the identity of Arabs who are assimilated into Israeli culture.

Read: August 8, 2025

4 Stars

Books Set in Asia; Israel

The Last Testament, by Sam Bourne (2007)

Read:  April 11, 2025

3 Stars

Maggie Costelle # 1

Books Set in Europe and Asia; Poland and Israel

Once We Were Home, by Jennifer Rosner (2023)

Read: July 15, 2024

4 Stars

Books Set in the Middle East

The English Teacher, by Yiftach Reicher Atir (2013)

Read: August 1, 2022

3 Stars

Books Set in the Middle East: Israel

Homesick, by Eshkol Nevo (2008)

 

Homesick takes place in a small village somewhere between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where we become acquainted with several of its residents.  The book with college students, Amir and Noa, young college students looking for their first apartment in the fall of 1995.  Amir is studying psychology in Tel Aviv and Noa is a photography student at the Bezalel Art College in Jerusalem, hence their need for a place in between both cities.

 

Most of the residents in the village are Jewish immigrants from Kurdistan.  Amir and Noa find a small apartment in a home inhabited by Moshe and Sima Zakian and Moshe’s parents, Avram and Gina.  Their landlords are about their same age but married young and have two small children.  They share a common wall with their landlord, and in fact, much reach through a small hole in the wall to turn on the hot water to their apartment.

 

The house across the street belongs to Reuven and Nechama Averni.  Amir and Noa mistakenly enter the Averni home when they first arrive, thinking that is their intended destination.  The Averni’s are sitting shiva for their son Gidi, who was kill fighting in Lebanon.  Nechama is unable to stop grieving for her son and neglects her younger son, Yotam, who befriends Amir.

 

The home where the Zakian’s live had formerly been owned by an Arab family prior to 1948.  Saddiq A’adana, a middle-aged Arab, has been working on a construction site nearby.  He recognized the Zakian’s house as the one he lived in as a young child.  He is determined to get into the house to look for a gold chain that was left behind when his family fled.  He tries to make conversation with Gina, but she is fearful of him.

 

In Israel, the title of the book literally means Four Houses and Longings.  This title aptly describes the characters we are introduced to.  Each has his or her own longings, some of which they keep to themselves, causing rifts with their loved ones.  I just loved the way the characters came alive.

 

I first read this book in July 2017.  I still loved it upon a 2^nd reading.

 

Read:  May 12, 2021

 

5 Stars

 

~~~~~~~~~

Homesick, by Eshkol Nevo (2008)

Homesick by Eshkol Nevo takes place in a small village somewhere between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We are introduced to the town when we meet Amir and Noa in the Fall of 1995, who are looking for their first apartment together. They find a tiny apartment in a house that before the War of Independence had belonged to an Arab family. Now the house is home to Sima and Moshe, a young couple with two small children, and Moshe's parents, who have the upstairs apartment. The family next door just lost their eldest son in the war in Lebanon. Because the parents are so distraught, they ignore their younger son, Yotam, who befriends Amir. Nearby, another family is adding on to their home. One of the Arab construction workers, Saddiq, once lived in the house now home to Sima and Moshe.

This novel is told through the voices of many characters. Thus, we experience the everyday experiences and interpersonal relationship from many points of view. This really made the characters come alive. I loved this book. 

Read: July 21, 2017

5 Stars 

Books Set in Asia: Israel; Bethlehem

The Collaborator of Bethlehem, by Matt Beynon Rees (2006)

 

This is a rather disturbing mystery novel, the first in the Omar Yussef series, that focuses on Omar Yussef, a schoolteacher in a United Nations school in Bethleham.  The novel is about the tensions between the Muslim Arabs and the Christians living in Bethleham.  Added to the mix are the Israelis who seek out terrorists and the so-called Martyrs Brigade that terrorizes everyone.

 

Omar has been teaching for many years and is toying with the idea of retirement.  Many of his former students are now successful citizens of the area and Omar has maintained bonds with them.  One of his students, George Saba now runs an antique shop.

 

When a member of the Martyrs Brigade was shot and killed, George, a Christian, was arrested and sentenced to death as being a collaborator of the Israelis to target terrorists.  Omar believes that George is innocent and takes a leave from his classroom to become an amateur sleuth to prove George is in the clear.

 

Omar uncovers evidence that he believes clears George, but no one is willing to consider.  The novel is disturbing.  The police detective tells George that his job is to keep his head down and consider only the state and its security, regardless of the innocence or guilt of a suspect.  The thrust of this mystery lies in the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

Read: February 12, 2021

 

3 Stars

 

 

 

Books Set in Europe and Asia: Hungary, Poland and Israel

In Our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe ~ A Dwarf Family’s Survival of the Holocaust, by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev (2004)

 

This book is about the Ovitz family, a Jewish family from Transylvania.  In 1868, the patriarch of the family, Shimshon Eizik Ovitz.  He was born to normal-sized parents; however, he acquired a mutant gene, which made him a dwarf.  He married and his wife, who was of normal height, gave birth to two daughters, both of whom were also dwarfs.  Shortly after his wife died, Shimshon remarried a young woman, only a few years older than his oldest daughter.  Soon, their family grew.  Of Shimshon’s 10 children, seven were dwarfs.  The oldest child, Rozika, was born in 1886; the youngest, Perla, in 1921.

 

The family stuck together, with the normal-sized sibling caring for the other seven.  They built their own vaudeville troupe, known as the Lilliput Troupe, and entertained neighboring villages and cities with music, skits, jokes and other entertainment.  This made them well known and afforded them a means to survive.

 

Then the Holocaust came to their part of Transylvania.  All Jews of the area were transported to concentration camps.  The Ovitz family (minus one brother) were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The novelty of having seven little people in one family caught the eye of Joseph Mengele, and they were spared, along with their 3 normal-sized sibling.  They also convinced Mengele that several other townspeople were also family members.

 

This gave Mengele an opportunity to “experiment” on the entire extended family.  In exchange, the family was afforded certain “luxuries” not afforded the other prisoners.  They all lived in fear, however, never knowing what atrocities would be committed to their bodies.  Amazingly, despite the torture inflicted upon them, all of the members of the extended “family” survived the Holocaust.  They ultimately were able to immigrate to Israel, where they spent their remaining lives.

 

This is an important story and provides insight into the human experimentation conducted in the camps.  The book, however, jumps around too much, which interrupts the flow of the story.

 

Read:  January 21, 2021

 

3.5 Stars

 

 

 

 

 

Books Sent in Asia: Middle East: Israel and Lebanon

Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War, by Matti Friedman (2016)

In the Israeli military language, casualties in war are called flowers, and deaths are known as oleanders.  These euphemisms are deemed to take away some of the ugliness of war.

Pumpkinflowers describes the author’s involvement in Israel’s military presence in southern Lebanon during the late 1990s.  Pumpkin was the name of the Israeli outpost in the Lebanon Security Zone.  During the period that Israel maintained these outposts to protect the communities in northern Israel from Hezbollah’s growing presence in the area.

In the late 1990s, the author was drafted into the Israeli army and sent to Outpost Pumpkin (it was never referred to as The Pumpkin).  Shortly before the author was sent to Pumpkin, two Israel helicopters, filled with young soldiers, collided on their way to Pumpkin.  There were 73 oleanders.  Israel’s support for continuing these outpost began to wane after this event.  It was about this time that Friedman arrived at Pumpkin.  Brief skirmishes continued unto 2000, when Israel withdrew from the security zone.

The soldiers could look down on the Lebanese village of Nabatieh.  In particular, they observed a small restaurant.  They would joke about how they would like to have a meal at the restaurant someday.

The First section of the book focuses on a young soldier, Avi, who was a bit of a rebel.  He was also a talented writer, who served at Pumpkin before the author’s arrival.  The Second section describes Friedman’s days at Pumpkin.

The final sections of the book describe life after Pumpkin.  Years later, Friedman traveled to Lebanon as a tourist.  After traveling throughout the country, he hired a cab to take him to the southern part of the country.  He stopped at the restaurant he had observed as a young soldier from the Pumpkin and enjoyed a meal.  He convinced his driver to take him up the hill where the outpost had been, ostensibly to take photos, but to feel the place again where he has spent 3 years in a forgotten military command.

Read:  August 6, 2020

4 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Israel

Waking Lions, by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (2014)

Dr. Eitan Green is a young neurosurgeon who had been transferred to a remote hospital in the Negev because he refused to participate in a bribery scheme in his hospital in the city.  While driving home one evening after a long day at the hospital, he ran over and killed an Eritrean immigrant on a lonely stretch of the desert road.  He got out of his SUV to investigate, and, although the man was still alive, it was clear that the man was fatally injured.  Eitan got back in his vehicle and drove home to his wife and two young sons.

The next morning, the dead man’s widow, Sirket, knocked on Eitan’s door and handed him his wallet.  She told him to meet her late in the evening in a garage nearby.  Thinking that she wanted money, Eitan withdrew a large sum of money to bring to their rendezvous.  Sirket took the money, but she wanted so much more.

Illegal immigrants from Eritrea have been flooding into Israel and are in need of medical care.  Sirket quickly saw that she could blackmail Eitan into treating these people in return for his silence.  She demanded that he go to the garage each night after his daily rounds are over.  In order to do this, Eitan must begin a web of lies with his wife and with his boss at the hospital.

Meanwhile, Eitan’s wife, Liat, is a police detective.  She was assigned to investigate the hit-and-run.  Her fellow officers, however, were disinterested in tracking down the driver, since the victim was “just” an illegal.  Furthermore, they blamed the hit-and-run on young Bedouin boy, who refused to participate in his defense after he was arrested.

This is a novel of secrets.  As the layers of the characters are peeled back, the reader learns of the secrets each one carries and the price of those burdens.  The novel also investigates the complex relations between the Israeli, Bedouins and Eritreans.

The title of the book comes from an Eritrean proverb that says once a lion has woken up and tastes human flesh, it will never eat anything else again.  As we learn more about Sirket, we realize that she has become the woken lion.

Because Eitan is a neurosurgeon, the first few pages describe medical conditions.  I was struck by the description of the hit-and-run victim because my mother was also struck and killed by a car (although not a hit-and-run) and suffered a similar injury.

This is the best book I have read this year.

Read:  July 21, 2020

5 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Israel

The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah, by Joel Chasnoff (2010)

Joel Chasnoff, the author of this memoir is a stand-up comedian, who, at the age of 24 decided that he wanted to join the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).  Chasnoff grew up in a Conservative home in the United States, but felt a strong connection to Israel.  He had made a couple of visits to Israel, and as he explored his Jewishness, he decided he wanted to fulfill his long desire to serve in the IDF.  He describes his entry into the IDF, where he was assigned to the Armored Corps.

This book describes the rigors of the basic training and the bonds formed with his fellow soldiers.  At age 24, he was years older than his fellow recruits, who were all still in their teens.  His superior officers were barely in their 20s.  He is trained as a tank gunner, and after initial training, finds himself in the Golan on the Israel-Lebanon border.

On his rare days off, he visits his Israeli girlfriend and her family in Tel Aviv.  His training schedule is exhausting and on his time off, he only wants to veg.  His girlfriend, however, wants to party.  Maintaining a relationship is not easy.

When Chasnoff and his girlfriend decide to get married, he also learns just what it means to be a Jew in Israel.  Parts of this book were laugh-out-loud funny.  Other parts certainly provide food for thought.

This book was an easy and enjoyable read.

Read:  June 11, 2020

4 Stars

Books Set in the Middle East: Israel, Syria and Lebanon

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, by Matti Friedman (2019)

This book focuses on the beginning of the Israeli intelligence force that began before the creation of the State of Israel.  The book focuses on four spies who were born and grew up in the Arab countries and were familiar with Muslim customs, culture and language.  They were of families who had lived in the Middle East long before the European Jews began to migrate to what would become the Land of Israel.

Gamliel Cohen was the most educated of the four spies.  He was a Syrian Jew from Damascus.  Isaac Shoshan was also Syrian, from Aleppo.  Havakuk Cohen was a Yemeni Jew and Yakuba Cohen was a wild “street child” from Jerusalem.  They were recruited by Palmach to be a part of the Arab Section ~ Jews who could “pass” for Arabs while gathering intelligence.  They were deep undercover in Syria and Lebanon for a country that had yet to exist.

The author emphasizes that the State of Israel could not have been built without the Middle-Eastern Jews.  It is hubris to believe that Israel was solely the creation of European Jews. After Israel became a State, Jews from around the Arab world were suddenly expelled from their homes and found their way to Israel.  Today over 50% of Israeli Jews have roots in the Arab world.  This is what makes Israel so unique and so difficult for Western countries to fully appreciate and understand Israel.

The author carefully researched this book, poring over archival materials and oral histories.  Isaac Shoshan was an old man in his 90s when the author wrote this book.  He met with the author several times and provide his recollection of his days in Palmach’s Arab Section.

This book was very enlightening on the beginnings of the State of Israel.  The author, Matti Friedman, also wrote the Aleppo Codex, which I read in February 2013.

Read: April 29, 2019

4 Stars

Books Set in Asia: the Middle East: Asia

The Waiting Room, by Leah Kaminsky (2016)

Dr. Dina Ronen is the daughter of Holocaust survivors.  As a young girl, she over heard a conversation and learned that her father had been married before and lost his wife and daughter in the Holocaust ~ that she and her mother were the replacement family.

After the War, her parents moved to Australia, where Dina grew up.  As an adult, Dina while traveling she met and married Eitan, and Israeli, and settled down in Haifa.  She believed that Haifa was a safe city in Israel and would be spared terrorist attacks.

When the novel opens it is 2001 and Dina has a six-year old son, is eight months pregnant and is beginning to question her marriage.  She is unsettled by the terror attacks that are occurring throughout the country. She wants to return to her home in Australia.

Dina’s mother, who died when Dina was 18, is always in her mind.  She “sees” her mother through a ghost whenever her mind is especially troubled. Her mother appears to her throughout the day conversing arguing and nagging her.

Possibly due to her pregnancy, the terrors of Israel are haunting her and causing her to wonder how she can protect her family. Her medical practice is an array of varied people of all religions and ages.  Her office manager, Yael, is a young woman who tries to keep Dina on schedule with her patients.

News reports that there may be an attack in Haifa. This sets Dina on edge and she can barely keep herself together while tending to her patients.  While dealing with a possible terror attack, she must also face her parent’s history and decide whether she should try to keep her marriage in tact or return to a perceived safety net of Australia.

I enjoyed the first part of this book, but the last quarter got a bit tiresome.

Read:  April 18, 2018

3 Stars

Books Set in Europe and the Middle East

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

3 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Israel

The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, by Sarit Yishai-Levi (2013; English Version 2016)

The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem follows several generations of the women in the Ermosa family from the beginning of the 1900s, through the birth of the State of Israel, to the 1970s.  The Ermosas were Sephardic Jews who had lived in Jerusalem since they were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition.  The novel is sprinkled with Ladino words and phrases.

Gabriela is the some-times narrator of the novel as she comes of age and tries to understand her very dysfunctional family.  Her grandmother Rosa tells her that the Ermosa women are cursed to be married to men who don’t love them.  Rosa had been an orphan when she suddenly finds herself married to well-to-do Gabriel.  For a brief moment, she believes her life has changed, but then finds herself in a loveless marriage, arranged by her mother-in-law to keep her son from his true love.

Gabriela’s mother, Luna, was the eldest daughter of Gabriel and Rosa.  Luna, deemed the most beautiful woman in Jerusalem, is a spoiled, self-centered woman.  Family life circles around Luna’s moods.  Luna married David, who had a secret past.  She thought he was her knight in shining armor, only be faced with the daily grind of married life.  When her daughter, Gabriela, is born, she feels no bond with her child.  Gabriela bonds with her loving father, aunts and grandmother, but feels no special love for her mother.

The family dramas are played out against the drama of the events leading up to the creation of the State of Israel, including the tensions between the Sephardim and Ashkenazim.  We learn much about the stories and lives of Rosa and Luna.  The novel seems to take an abrupt turn, however, when the focus is on the adult Gabriela, and her story is told quickly on only a few pages.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will look for others by this Israeli author.

5 Stars

Read:  February 7, 2018

Books Set in Asia: Israel

Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service, by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal (2012)

This book describes some of the operational details of the Mossad.  Most of the missions are ones that have already been highly publicized, such as the capture of Adolph Eichmann in Argentina and the capture and murder of Eli Cohen in Syria.  

Mildly interesting, but I have read other books about  the Mossad that are better.

Read:  December 20, 2017

3 Stars

Books Set in the Middle East: Israel

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan (2006)

This book purports to be the unlikely friendship between an Arab man, Bashir, and a Jewish woman, Dalia, and a house in Israel that had belonged Bashir's family before the creation of the State of Israel.  After the creation of the State of Israel, Dalia's family lived in the house.  As young adults, the two meet, when Bashir went to visit his family home.

The book made me very angry because it presented a one-sided view of the history of the State of Israel.  Even the words chosen, such as calling Israeli's "settlers" shows bias.  Nearly all Israelis depicted in the book, with the exception of Dalia and her husband, come off as being bad and uncompassionate

Read:  September 26, 2015

2 Stars

Books Set in Asia: Israel

Jerusalem Maiden, by Talia Carner (2011)


4 Stars

Read: August 10, 2014