Joseph's Bookstore - Recommends

Here are some wonderful books by the next generation of Israeli authors, fizzing with talent and wit,
diversity and insight

	Accidents Yael Hedaya PB £10.95 For Shira Klein, Yonatan Luria, and his daughter, Dana, it is winterwinter at work, winter among friends, winter at home, and winter of the heart. Yonatan is a marginal writer, a fifty-year-old widower left to raise his child alone. When he meets Shira, a bestselling author paralyzed by stage fright, the thaw begins as man, woman, and girl enter a halting relationship, alternately tender and belligerent, generous and withdrawn.

	Arafat's Elephant Jonathan Tel PB £10.95 From the astonishing "A Story About a Bomb," which burrows inside the minds of an Arab terrorist and his Israeli captor, to the rueful title story about an Arab family presented with the gift of an elephant from a Turkish sultan, this well-crafted collection explores the ironies and subterfuges of life in the Middle East.

	A Trumpet in the Wadi Sami Michael PB £10.95 Set in the months preceding the 1982 Israeli-Arab conflict in Lebanon, this beautifully written tale is the coming-of-age story of two fatherless Christian Arab sisters, Huda and Mary, who live in the wadi -- the Arab quarter in the Jewish city of Haifa on the northern coast of Israel.

	Adjusting Sights Haim Sabato PB £7.99 a unique insight into the world of the Israeli army from the pen of a modern orthodox Jew, who has been hailed as Agnon's successor. Based on his own experiences as a tank commander in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

	Aleppo Tales Haim Sabato PB £9.99 Three novellas spanning over a hundred years in the life of the Syrian jewish community from which Sabato springs, full of wonder and reverence for the past as it encounters and enlivens the present.

	The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories Etgar Keret PB £7.99 Keret is a cross between Tarantino and Kafka these stories are fabulously funny, dark without being despairing. If you haven't read him before, this is the place to start. According to Keret, hell is a lot like Tel Aviv..

	Gaza Blues Etgar Keret and Samir El-Youssef PB £8.99 Immensely funny and moving, in a very black and sharp-edged way. This collection of short stories is a unique collaboration between Etgar Keret and the Palestinian author Samir El-Youssef, which highlights the parallels between the two peoples in terms of experience and shared insight.