The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land
Stories
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From “a marvelous new voice” (Rebecca Makkai), these “extraordinarily imaginative” (Sigrid Nunez), “revelatory” (Nicole Krauss), “superb” (Kiran Desai) stories transcend borders as they render the intimate lives of people striving for connection.
WINNER OF THE AJL JEWISH FICTION AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land announces the arrival of a natural-born storyteller of immense talent. Warm, poignant, delightfully whimsical, Omer Friedlander’s gorgeously immersive and imaginative stories take you to the narrow limestone alleyways of Jerusalem, the desolate beauty of the Negev Desert, and the sprawling orange groves of Jaffa, with characters that spring to vivid life. A divorced con artist and his daughter sell empty bottles of “holy air” to credulous tourists; a Lebanese Scheherazade enchants three young soldiers in a bombed-out Beirut radio station; a boy daringly “rooftops” at night, climbing steel cranes in scuffed sneakers even as he reimagines the bravery of a Polish-Jewish dancer during the Holocaust; an Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son, a soldier killed in Gaza.
These stories render the intimate lives of people striving for connection. They are fairy tales turned on their head by the stakes of real life, where moments of fragile intimacy mix with comedy and notes of the absurd. Told in prose of astonishing vividness that also demonstrates remarkable control and restraint, they have a universal appeal to the heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Friedlander debuts with a dynamic story collection set in Israel that probes the challenges faced by Israeli Jews—national security, relations with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, religious-secular schisms—with sensitivity and compassion. "Checkpoint" is told from the perspective of a grieving mother who monitors potential human rights abuses at a checkpoint between Israel and the occupied territories. She ruminates about sending her son off "to be killed in a war I don't believe in, fighting for a government I hate." In "The Sephardi Survivor," two siblings, envious of their classmates who have family Holocaust stories, try to convince an old man to pose as their grandfather for their school's Shoah Memorial Day. "Jaffa Oranges" explores a Jewish man's guilt over betraying a Palestinian friend, and the title story unpacks the fraught relationship between a father and his daughter, who helps him sell "holy" bottled air. Friedlander imbues his characters with a deeply felt humanity, and his finely tuned command of emotional tenor will evoke tears and laughter in equal measure ("I couldn't study because I was listening to my grandfather's Shoah story was a common reason for failing a math test"). These superior character portraits make for an auspicious start.
