Murder, mystery and malaise Sending Omar Yussef, his teacher-sleuth, into Gaza, Matt Rees, in his second novel, offers up not only a compelling detective yarn, but also a searing commentary on Palestinian elites that betray the interests of their people
By Ina Friedman
A city that was and is no longer Is there another small city in the world that has inspired so many books and articles? What is about Czernowitz that continues to captivate so many, long after it ceased to be a center of Jewish-German culture?
By Aharon Appelfeld
The book of Dahlia In this comic novel about a young woman who learns she has a fatal disease, the author charts the course of her character's treatments and also goes back in time to tell us the story of her life.
By Ellen Litman
Maybe they just like the beat Jared Cohen, a Swahili-speaking American Jewish Wunderkind, spent part of his time as a Rhodes scholar traveling through the Muslim Middle East. Was he right to let it fill him with hope?
By Bari Weiss
'I was Hitler's doctor' Jay Neugeboren touches on questions of honor and evil in a strange narrative built around the story of Dr. Eduard Bloch, a Jewish Austrian physician who was the Fuehrer's physician and confidant.
By Gerald Sorin
Down to earth Since the writing of the Bible down to the last, bloody century, humans have tried to find a place for God in their political life - or have fought the same impulse. Historian Mark Lilla tries to make sense of it all.
By Yehudah Mirsky
The good life is at hand Tal Ben-Shahar does not deny the existence of serious psychological disorders, but he does believe attitude has a lot to do with attaining satisfaction. The trick is to combine pleasure with meaning.
By Amit Fachler
With a wink and a nod How did the cool pragmatism that guided Israel through the existential chaos of 1948 succumb to a catastrophic burst of messianic excitement after the Six-Day War? According to Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, the answer lies with the state.
By Evan R. Goldstein
Reconstituting Rice Because they focus on how the secretary of state will try to salvage her last year in office, two new biographies could almost be used as background primers on how Condoleezza Rice might manage the peace process in that time.
By Daniel Levy
Romantic - but wrong Tsur Shezaf's novel imagines a Bedouin revolt in the Negev in 2009. It turns out, however, that Shezaf was not the first to imagine such a scenario, which also appears in ominous defense establishment forecasts. The big question is why.
By Erez Tzfadia
A conversation with Yossi Nir An expert on particle physics and coauthor of 'The
Mystery of the Missing Antimatter,' offers a general introduction to the history and structure of the known universe.
By David B. Green
Home Libraries Haim Sabato, from Ma'aleh Adumim, a teacher, writer andf author of 'Adjusting Sights' and 'The Dawning of the Day,' talks about his collection of books, including his oldest tome, his most expensive book and his favorite writers.
By Vered Lee
Flying in the face of perfection In Ram vebarur (Loud and Clear), an ace Israeli pilot lives up to expectations in an eloquent memoir that offers insight into his upbringing, his career in the air and - most important - his endearing flaws.
By Uri Dromi
One direction home In his newest novel, the imaginative and absorbing 'A Pigeon and a Boy,' Meir Shalev toggles back and forth in time as he examines people's eternal search for a place to call their own.
By Ruth Margalit
Lines / Slow tongue Shira Stav is a resident of Tel Aviv and is a lecturer in literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In 2007, Stav was awarded the annual Teva Prize for Poetry at the Metulla Festival.
Translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden
Societies of misfits Here is an opportunity to see the growth of Irene Nemirovsky's talent, from the fledgling coarseness of 'David Golder' through the more fully realized 'The Courilof Affair,' which shows some of the genius of 'Suite Francaise.'
By Gerald Sorin
Pushing the boundaries of identity Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Arnold Schoenberg, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig - it's easy to compile an impressive list of famous German Jewish intellectuals, much harder to say what such a list means.
By James Loeffler
For the love of Arabic Sasson Somekh says Zionism wasn't behind his decision to leave Baghdad in 1951. Rather, he made aliyah only when it became clear that, as a Jew, he wouldn't be able to study his beloved Arabic literature.
By Ina Friedman
The greater the man, the greater the tragedy Avi Shilon's approach to Menachem Begin is justifiably ambivalent. The complex leader, who both charmed and terrified a nation, left behind him a legacy, but also scorched earth.
By Yossi Sarid
'They are people, like us' In two novels, Egyptian writer Adhaf Soueif chronicles the minutiae of coming of age in the turbulent 1960s and 70s in the Middle East, touching on experiences intimately familiar to many Israelis.
By Vivian Eden
The dead will not stop living The power of this second volume by Saul Friedlander of his general history of the Holocaust lies in the contemporary documention he brings forward, much of it left behind by victims, but also diaries from perpetrators.
By Ada Pagis
A conversation with Evan Fallenberg Author of the provocative new novel 'Light Fell,' and translator of 'Beaufort,' the best-selling Israeli novel that was the basis for the Oscar-nominated film about the run-up to the Israeli military exit from Lebanon.
By David B. Green
With style to burn Michael Chabon's serial-form novel offers something for the epic lover, the slavish Chabonophile and the devotee of American Jewish literature. In 'Gentlemen of the Road,' Chabon again puts his theories to the test.
By Jeremy Dauber
A conversation with Geraldine Brooks The author and Pulitzer Prize winner talks about her conversion to Judaism, the subjugation of women in Muslim countries, and her new historical novel about the strange saga of the Sarajevo Haggadah.
By David B. Green
Destroying heresy from within In his boook Gnosis moderni ve-tzionut (Modern Gnosis and Zionism), Israeli scholar Yotam Hotam describes Zionism as a modern Gnostic movement, one that adopted a paradoxical secular-messianic model.
By Mor Altshuler
Book of lamentations Yoav Gelber is disturbed by the transformation of history from a science to a subjective discipline dominated by ideology. His argument would be easier to accept if he could acknowledge his own ideological slant.
By Tom Segev
Home Libraries Psychologist and writer Amia Lieblich offers an insight into her personal library, revealing her preference for Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka, and sharing her favorite lines from Lea Goldberg's poem 'Toward Myself.'
By Vered Lee
Jihad and Jew-Hatred Matthias Kuentzel debunks the view that Islamic Jew-hatred was a natural reaction to Israel's independence, and claims that radical Islam is grounded in the ideas of Jerusalem's former grand mufti, an ally of Hitler.
By Benjamin Weinthal
Coming into the light This account by a purported former Mossad agent is filled with pride and admiration for the agency and its work, and it may be these that account for the author's lack of distance and perspective.
By Reuven Miran
Friendship Agi Mishol's long poem sequence about childhood in the 1950s, "Biqur Bayit" (Home Visit), appears in the latest issue of "Alpayim: A Multidisciplinary Publication for Contemporary Thought and Literature.
Translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden
Getting it rite In their search for religious authenticity, many practitioners of Judaism have adopted the philosophy of 'Jew It Yourself,' creating new ceremonies and practices to give new meaning to their faith.
By Esther Solomon
Wild joy on the edge of devastation These days, it is said of many books that they 'will change' their readers, but only rarely is this the case; but this anthology by the great Russian writer Andrei Platonov does precisely that.
By Ronit Matalon
Small man, heroic qualities Once he decided he wanted to be a 'good writer,' Bernard Malamud concentrated on his work to the exclusion of almost everything else. A new biography reminds us just how well his efforts paid off.
By Benjamin Balint
Who will pay the price? Is it an accident that Jewish criminal law, which is otherwise so subtly sophisticated, has no provisions for the punishment of offenses committed by human beings against their peers?
By Jacob Weinroth
Treasured island Part travelogue, part reportage, part memoir, 'An Island Called Home' is a Jewish exile's account of her return to Cuba and is filled with yearning for a lost childhood and a lost world.
By Carol Cook
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
