This book turned out to be so much more than I expected. On the face of it, it is an account of how the author comes to terms with the fact that he suThis book turned out to be so much more than I expected. On the face of it, it is an account of how the author comes to terms with the fact that he suffers from PTSD after fighting for Israel in the Second Lebanon War. But more than that, it is the story of how going to war can change a man, not just his life, but also his outlook on the same. Omri Ginzburg was quite literally raised for war, growing up hearing the heroic war stories of his father and uncle in a country where wars are regular events and conscription is obligatory. And yet, the discovery of his condition takes him on a psychological journey the struggles of which he brilliantly conveys in this book. It’s worth remembering that Israel is a country that relies heavily on its conscription-based military and, as such, often prefers to pretend that PTSD doesn’t exist. To try to understand what you’re going through and get relevant treatment plunges you into an interminable nightmare of doublespeak, condescendence, gaslighting and bureaucracy. Ginzburg’s descriptions of the effects of his PTSD are nothing short of harrowing and would often slip into my nightmares if I were to read it before going to sleep. If his goal was to give his readers a glimpse into what living with this condition is like, he definitely succeeds. Furthermore, the book is just brilliantly executed on a technical level. It is a compelling read that ever propels you forward through the smart usage of several literary devices, from a nested doll framework jumping between time periods to the looming Chekhov’s gun that are the red notebooks he filled during the war and has never dared to read since. The whole thing builds up towards an ending that is absolutely heart-stopping. This book deserves to be widely read; I absolutely recommend you support this self-published endeavour....more
This is the ultimate Holocaust novel for people who don't like Holocaust novels.
The Memory Monster is a fictional letter written by an Israeli HolocauThis is the ultimate Holocaust novel for people who don't like Holocaust novels.
The Memory Monster is a fictional letter written by an Israeli Holocaust scholar to the head of Yad Vashem, Israel's institution for the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust, in which he explains the series of events that led his mind to unravel.
What's great about this book is that it's not about the Holocaust per se, but about the way we talk about and remember the Holocaust today. Our protagonist makes a living as a guide for groups of Israeli teenagers who are sent to the extermination camps in Poland to learn about the Holocaust, but he exasperates as, over time, he realises that the lessons being learnt are all askew. The memory of the Holocaust is more about remembering the Nazis and how they did what they did than about remembering the victims and what they suffered. This bizarrely kindles a sort of abstract admiration for the Nazis and disdain towards the victims, who are seen as being led to their deaths "like lambs to the slaughter".
As the number of Holocaust survivors in the world dwindles, we have become so detached from the events that took place that it becomes easier for every person with an agenda to instrumentalise the memory of the Holocaust for their own purposes, from Israeli government officials seeking a moral high ground to artsy film directors who turn it into a pastiche for dramatic effect. The bit about the film director reminded me of this brilliant interview where Michael Haneke disses Spielberg and Eichinger for using Hitler and the Holocaust as a source for entertainment.
Also, I don't want to end this review without mentioning the humour. This book is disturbing, even hard-hitting at times, but it's also quite darkly funny.
Absolutely recommend giving this a chance; it's one of those books that spark a discussion. You will read it and immediately want to talk about the questions it poses....more
I sought this book out because, during an exchange semester in Israel, I attended a course on Bible analysis by Yair Zakovitch. This rough-lExcellent.
I sought this book out because, during an exchange semester in Israel, I attended a course on Bible analysis by Yair Zakovitch. This rough-looking sabra with a mischievous twinkle in his eye is a mesmerising lecturer: afable, humorous and an endless source of insights. I hold him almost entirely responsible for my fascination with deconstructing Biblical stories.
This book belongs to the Jewish Lives series, a collection of Jewish biographies ranging from Moses to Groucho Marx. Tasked with the challenge of writing the biography of a mythical figure, made more difficult by the fact that his only source is another biography, Zakovitch employs his signature technique: literary archaeology.
As applied to the Bible, it goes beyond a simple application of the documentary hypothesis to the story of Jacob. Noting that the Torah is a patchwork of several different texts, stitched together and edited for political and religious purposes, he combs the sparse verses to detect echoes of the older oral traditions that the original texts drew on when they were put to paper, and then uses these echoes to make some truly Holmesian deductions about the political motivations that dictated the final form of the story.
One such deduction that stood out to me was that the kingdoms of Judah and Israel each had their own distinct patriarch: the story of Abraham was a tradition from the southern kingdom of Judah, and the story of Jacob, of the northern kingdom of Israel. Their contents were then intermingled and connected via the much less fleshed-out story of Isaac to create a genealogy that united both kingdoms under a single mythical mantle.
As interesting as it would be to see Zakovitch reconstruct the original Abraham myth, this book is about Jacob, and so we get glimpses of how, instead of the easily manipulated can’t-catch-a-break Jacob we know from the Torah, the original northern patriarch was more of a cunning trickster that swindled and outsmarted people left and right. In short, what Zakovitch does is paint a triple portrait: he shows who Jacob originally was, who the priestly editors wanted him to be, and who they ultimately turned him into.
The book also does a great deal of literary analysis, pointing out the many episodes in the patriarch’s life that mirror one another to great poetic effect. For instance, how the part about Jacob being tricked into bedding Leah instead of Rachel mirrors Jacob’s tricking his father into blessing him instead of Esau (both stories feature switcheroos and sightlessness).
These are just a couple of anecdotes, but the book is stuffed with them. Despite its short length it took me a long while to read because there’s so much information to process. If you’re also turned on by this sort of thing, you’re in for a blast....more
Tel Aviv’s actual Central Bus Station is a labyrinthine hulk of crumbling concrete that looms Gormenghast-like over the poor, backwater neighbourhoodsTel Aviv’s actual Central Bus Station is a labyrinthine hulk of crumbling concrete that looms Gormenghast-like over the poor, backwater neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv. It’s a place begging to be written about. It thrives with ill life at the point beyond which it no longer matters if it’s abandoned, forgotten or given up on. The station crouches impervious amidst the looting and loitering, the heavy responsibility-wanting silence of those angry but too weak or sick to cry out, the invisible rustle of currency seeping between the immigrated black hands moving and moving for equally black markets. It even contains an abandoned nuclear fallout shelter that became so densely populated by bats it was declared a nature reserve.
When I first visited the station, years ago, I described it in my travel notes as a setting out of a cyberpunk novel - so when I learnt that an actual cyberpunk novel had been written about it in which the bus station is reimagined as a far-future space station, I couldn’t get my hands on it soon enough. In Tidhar’s novel, the ramshackle Chabad stands are replaced by chapters of the Church of Robot; the knock-off handbags and computer part shops, by imitation Armani-patented gene-ripped eye colour providers; and the garish arcades, by full-immersion MMORPGs in which people lead parallel lives and even make a living.
The book is great. It’s not story-heavy, being a patchwork of short stories rewritten and roughly sewn together to form a single narrative. Consequently, it does tear a bit at the seams. But story is not what this book is about; it’s a book of ideas, a cracking post-singularity sci-fi positively crackling with electrifying ideas. Each chapter, each paragraph, is so packed with wildly imaginative details about this future society, one loses oneself in the scenery as one would do when contemplating a Brueghel.
I’m extremely happy Tel Aviv’s Central Station, a big rheumatic eyesore though it may be, got this futuristic homage, and I couldn’t help but pad out this review with a little homage of my own to the Central Station of the present as I know and experienced it, that place that welcomed me when I first stepped off a bus with the sight of a woman crouched, lace knickers strung between knees, in the middle of the street, pouring forth a sickly stream of piss, too darkly coloured –almost toffee– and rancid smelling to omen anything good, adding just another odour to the miasma of legal, illegal and loophole-legal drugs; burned out and/or over electric components; choking old CO-spewing motors; and dirty people lumbering under dirty clothes, their minds bunged up with software made softer from abusing the hardware, so soft it rips and splats and paves amongst the shit of man or dog, the stenches of which rise and mingle with the wafts of sex crawling out of red hardly-curtained windows, through the clouds of reefer, up past the clotheslines heavy with linen and drying shtreimels, above and beyond the station's reach but never escaping its gaze, trapped between the dim light of a sooty moon and the gravity well of a stony star....more
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