A short essay on a striking turn to Israel in American Jewish fiction this year, from the latest Jewish Review of Books: Distant Cousins Reading novels published in the last year by some of America’s best Jewish writers, I found myself struck by a recurring character—Israel. That...
A review (The Washington Post, June 23, 2017) of a new collection of essays about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank: What happens when famous novelists ‘confront the Occupation’ in the West Bank By Matti Friedman Last year, the American novelists Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman and Dave Eggers led...
A few speaking dates coming up -- for more details click on the date: May 8, 2017: Philadelphia. Jewish Community Services Building, 6:30 p.m. A conversation with Middle East historian Asaf Romirowsky. May 9: Washington, DC. New America (740 15th St NW), 6 p.m. A discussion with Douglas...
"Pumpkinflowers" was published in Hebrew last week by Dvir, an imprint of Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan. The Hebrew title is דלעת: מוצב אחד בלבנון, or "Pumpkin: One Outpost in Lebanon." ...
"Pumpkinflowers" is on the Foreign Affairs list of the best books of 2016, one of three in the "military, scientific, and technological" category. The list is here....
CITIC Press in Taiwan has just published 南瓜花 (nan gua hua) -- Pumpkinflowers in Chinese: ...
"Pumpkinflowers" has been chosen as one of five finalists for the 2017 Taylor Prize for Canadian non-fiction. The five are: Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War by Matti Friedman Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World by Marc Raboy This Is Not My Life: A...
Mother Jones includes "Pumpkinflowers" on its year-end list of 20 recommended books, describing it like this: "This is a 21st-century war story, with all of the IEDs, propaganda videos, jihadi groups we're accustomed to—but one told in the restrained, introspective style of the World War I writers...
Booklist has chosen "Pumpkinflowers" for its 2016 Editors' Choice list. The editors write: "Friedman’s compelling narrative of what he learned by serving in the late 1990s as an Israeli soldier assigned to a vulnerable hilltop fortress in Lebanon, called the Pumpkin, is freighted with explosive geopolitical...