Ask the Author: Oren Kessler
Answered Questions (8)
Oren Kessler
“Who by Fire” by Matti Friedman and “Nazi Billionaires” by David de Jong. And not just because they are acquaintances of mine here in Israel but because they’re supremely talented journalists and storytellers.
Oren Kessler
Read the Elements of Style, preferably multiple times. Then read good books and avoid bad ones. It’ll all get into your blood and become second nature.
As to how to make a living writing, I’m still working on that part.
As to how to make a living writing, I’m still working on that part.
Oren Kessler
Reading and writing material that you find fascinating (one hopes).
(There is oddly no question about the worst thing about being a writer, but I’ll answer nonetheless: The pay.)
(There is oddly no question about the worst thing about being a writer, but I’ll answer nonetheless: The pay.)
Oren Kessler
The beauty of writing nonfiction is that writer’s block is rarely even an option. If anything, you’re presented with far more material than you could ever include in your book, and the tricky part is killing your darlings, as they say, and leaving so much great stuff on the cutting-room floor (or stuffing it into the footnotes).
Oren Kessler
I’m an incorrigible Anglophile so probably somewhere in England, sometime in olden times. I’d have to think about it.
Oren Kessler
Promoting this book! My next career steps are entirely unclear. Any suggestions welcome.
Oren Kessler
Coffee, lots of it!
That and books. Reading well-crafted and well-researched books (specifically history in this case) makes me jealous that I hadn’t written them, and gives me that extra push.
That and books. Reading well-crafted and well-researched books (specifically history in this case) makes me jealous that I hadn’t written them, and gives me that extra push.
Oren Kessler
I hope this book can illuminate a forgotten but hugely formative chapter in Israeli and Palestinian history, and of the Middle East conflict itself. I argue that many facets of that conflict’s “template” took shape not in 1967, when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza, nor even in 1948, when the Jewish state was born, but a decade before. It was then that Palestine’s Arabs first united in concerted action against a common foe: Zionism and its midwife the British Empire. It was then that Palestine’s Jewish community became a force to be reckoned with militarily, economically, and demographically. And it was then that momentous concepts like “Jewish state” and “two-state solution” first appeared on the diplomatic agenda.
I won’t be so bold as to claim that learning about this period will magically solve the Middle East dispute, but I do argue that it fills some crucial historical gaps in understanding how we’ve reached this point of apparently endless discord and hopelessness.
I won’t be so bold as to claim that learning about this period will magically solve the Middle East dispute, but I do argue that it fills some crucial historical gaps in understanding how we’ve reached this point of apparently endless discord and hopelessness.
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