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The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land: Stories | Omer Friedlander
1 post | 1 read | 1 to read
A brilliant young authors stunning fiction debut: gorgeously immersive and imaginative stories that transcend borders as they render the intimate lives of people striving for connection A beautiful debut by a deeply humane writer. Every story is a vivid world unto itself, intensely felt, and often revelatory.Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love 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 Friedlanders 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.
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Maria_Pulver
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Mehso-so

#Hannukahchallenge 🕯️The stories are rather uneven but all make attempts to represent Israelis as very humane individuals, not some pieces of a monolithic nation providing news headlines.
The overall drawback for me is the writing style. It's not exactly pure realism because of the artistic freedom Friedlander uses, but it is not a mystical realism we're seeing in Edgar Keret's stories. It is more of some sort of an adolescent fantasy realism.