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Der Junge, der vom Frieden träumte
»Was der ›DRACHENLÄUFER‹ für Afghanistan,
ist der ›Der Junge, der vom Frieden träumte‹ für Palästina.«
Huffington Post
»Der Junge, der vom Frieden träumte« von Michelle Cohen Corasanti ist ein Roman, der den Leser den Nahostkonflikt hautnah erleben lässt. Er erzählt vom Schicksal eines jungen Palästinensers, der zwischen den Fronten des Krieges aufwächst und dennoch versucht, sich die Menschlichkeit zu bewahren.
Der zwölfjährige Palästinenser Ahmed kämpft um das Überleben seiner Familie, der einst eine blühende Orangenplantage gehörte. Mittlerweile haben die Israelis den dortigen Bauern fast alles genommen. Auf der Jagd nach einem Schmetterling kommt seine zweijährige Schwester Amal in einem Minenfeld ums Leben. Als auch noch sein Vater verhaftet und der Familie alles genommen wird, ist er der Einzige, der sie retten kann. Denn Ahmed ist ein Mathematikgenie und erhält eines der begehrten Stipendien an der Universität von Tel Aviv. Doch dort ist er der einzige Palästinenser unter Juden…
400 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 12, 2012
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Michelle Cohen Corasanti
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Michelle Cohen Corasanti grew up in a Jewish home in which German cars were boycotted and Israeli bonds were plentiful. Other than the blue-and-white tin Jewish National Fund sedakah box her family kept in the kitchen and the money they would give to plant trees in Israel, all she learned growing up was that after the Holocaust, the Jews found a land without a people for a people without a land and made the desert bloom.
Until third grade, Michelle attended public school and then she transferred to the Hillel Yeshiva. The greatest lesson Michelle feels she learned at this Yeshiva was articulated by Rabbi Hillel (30BC-10AD), one of the greatest rabbis of the Talmudic era in his famous quote, “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.” There were two students in her sixth grade graduating class.
Michelle returned to public school for seventh grade, stopped wearing skirts with pants underneath and re-befriended her former best friend whom she had lost touch with during her yeshiva years. Her friend’s father had since died, her mother turned into a raging alcoholic and her older brothers spent most of their time in their bedrooms listening to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in a state Michelle still was too young to recognize. Michelle’s friend lived without rules as she had no supervision. Just what every teenage girl wants and what every parent doesn’t.
Being the oldest and the only daughter in the family, Michelle’s parents’ strictness suffocated her. She decided she wanted to study abroad in Paris in order to get distance from her parental-choke-hold. Her Zionist parents rejected that idea and sent Michelle to Israel to study Judaism and Hebrew with the Rabbi’s perfectly well-behaved and obedient daughter Miriam. Michelle was sixteen-years-old and the year was 1982.
Despite having come from Utica, New York, the transition to the Ben Shemen Boarding School was effortless for Michelle. She soon had an Israeli boyfriend. When he told her he was a Kahanist, she had no idea what he was talking about. “I believe in transfer,” he told her. “There are 21 Arab countries, the Pal
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TwitterMichelle Cohen Corasanti grew up in a Jewish home in which German cars were boycotted and Israeli bonds were plentiful. Other than the blue-and-white tin Jewish National Fund sedakah box her family kept in the kitchen and the money they would give to plant trees in Israel, all she learned growing up was that after the Holocaust, the Jews found a land without a people for a people without a land and made the desert bloom.
Until third grade, Michelle attended public school and then she transferred to the Hillel Yeshiva. The greatest lesson Michelle feels she learned at this Yeshiva was articulated by Rabbi Hillel (30BC-10AD), one of the greatest rabbis of the Talmudic era in his famous quote, “That which is hateful to you, do not unto another. This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.” There were two students in her sixth grade graduating class.
Michelle returned to public school for seventh grade, stopped wearing skirts with pants underneath and re-befriended her former best friend whom she had lost touch with during her yeshiva years. Her friend’s father had since died, her mother turned into a raging alcoholic and her older brothers spent most of their time in their bedrooms listening to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in a state Michelle still was too young to recognize. Michelle’s friend lived without rules as she had no supervision. Just what every teenage girl wants and what every parent doesn’t.
Being the oldest and the only daughter in the family, Michelle’s parents’ strictness suffocated her. She decided she wanted to study abroad in Paris in order to get distance from her parental-choke-hold. Her Zionist parents rejected that idea and sent Michelle to Israel to study Judaism and Hebrew with the Rabbi’s perfectly well-behaved and obedient daughter Miriam. Michelle was sixteen-years-old and the year was 1982.
Despite having come from Utica, New York, the transition to the Ben Shemen Boarding School was effortless for Michelle. She soon had an Israeli boyfriend. When he told her he was a Kahanist, she had no idea what he was talking about. “I believe in transfer,” he told her. “There are 21 Arab countries, the Pal
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September 28, 2024
The story follows Ichmad, a Palestinian boy and his family. I have never read a book before from a Palestinian perspective, but I'm so glad I have now. This is a brutal, and truly heartbreaking read, but I would recommend The Almond Tree to anyone. Amazing book. Well done Michelle for bringing us an alternative perspective.
December 4, 2013
I reviewed this novel in a longer essay regarding novels that pervert the cultures and struggles of marginalized peoples. Here is the relevant portion:
Michelle Cohen-Corasanti's debut novel, The Almond Tree, is yet another example. The narrative creates sympathy with the oppressed (in this case, Palestinians) by enumerating the litany of injustices they must endure. Cohen-Corasanti, a Jewish White American woman of considerable privilege, said in an interview that she wrote this novel because she "wanted to bring about peace between Palestinians and Israelis" and to show that "we are all human beings and we're all equal."
In this context, a quote from novelist Teju Cole comes to mind: "The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm."
Cohen-Corasanti said she wanted to show how a "Palestinian and Israeli could overcome obstacles and work together to advance humanity." By "obstacles" she means the wholesale destruction of Palestinian society, use of the most advanced weaponry against principally unarmed civilians, demolition of homes, daily humiliation at hundreds of checkpoints, colour-coded license plates, Israeli-only roads, segregated buses, assassinations, imprisonment without charge or trial, theft of land and water, theft of homes and dignity, bombing of schools, curfews, deportations, multiple generations of refugees, and the general erasure of Palestine off the map.
Her idea was to create "the perfect Jewish woman" (Nora) for her protagonist, Ichmad, an unlikely, insufferable Palestinian man. Nora is later killed in a brazen insensitive event stolen from the life and murder of Rachel Corrie. Ichmad's next wife, Yasmine, is a simple-minded Palestinian who can't hold a candle to Nora. She "wasn't tall like Nora. Her facial features weren't delicate like Nora's; they were hidden in layers of baby fat. Her teeth were yellow and crooked and she was plump…How could I bring her to the States? How would she ever fit in at faculty parties?" On their wedding night, Ichmad pretends she is Nora. "Yasmine lay on the bed without movement, like dead meat." The insults, and Ichmad's contempt for his people, don't end.
As Teju Cole remarks: “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”
Regarding the protagonist's name, "Ichmad" is how Israelis pronounce Ahmad, the second most common name across the Arab world. Even Palestinian reviewers who liked this book couldn't stomach this Israelised version. Cohen-Corasanti claims "Ichmad" is an authentic pronounciation in the Triangle. I am familiar with the fellahi dialect in Um-el-Fahm, Taybeh and other Palestinian villages that make up the Triangle. No one pronounces Ahmad with "Ich" sound.
In fact, "Ichmad" is a form of an Arabic verb meaning to suffocate or subdue. Had the author consulted with a Palestinian or Arabic linguist, she'd have known that. But, according to her, in the seven years that it took to write this novel, she hired six editors: five Jewish, one Christian Fundamentalist, and all clearly lacking expertise in her subject matter. That alone speaks to the carelessness and arrogance with which Cohen-Corasanti approached Palestinian lives. That she did not conceive of hiring a Palestinian editor gives a lie to her avowed values of equality and partnership.
A Palestinian editor likely would have objected to another name: Professor Menachem Sharon (Menachem Begin meets Ariel Sharon - Grand Wizards of war criminals and wanton murders). Cohen-Corasanti mixes these two monsters to create a name for her Nobel Laureate professor character, who takes Ichmad under his wings.
Ichmad, whose family is impoverished by Israel, is a math prodigy who studies on a scholarship in an Israeli university in Jerusalem. Aside from the fact that most Palestinians in the West Bank cannot enter Jerusalem, much less go to university there (on a scholarship, no less), the notion that the path to success is necessarily through the oppressor's educational system is a typical supremacist assumption. It happens that even under the horrors and limitations of Israeli occupation, Palestinians have managed to build 26 institutions of higher education in the tiny enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza.
Since publication of The Almond Tree, the author has hired a Palestinian actor to "play" Ichmad in an interactive website, effectively commercializing Palestinian misery and humiliation.
Even irrelevant details are offensive. Only in the most orientalist imaginations would a Palestinian groom lift the veil of his bride with the tip of a sword. And only in the mind of a white American socialite does a poor brown Palestinian college student have only "homemade clothes" and must borrow someone's bellbottoms to wear to a party - as if "homemade clothes" are cheaper than a cheap pair of jeans; as if his family ran a sewing machine from their tent; as if residents of shantytowns the world over don't wear store-bought clothes.
An excellent review by Vacy Vlazna details other ways in which this racist, orientalist novel serves to make a hero of a self-loathing obsequious Palestinian cartoon of a man, and makes a pitiful villain of his brother, Abbas, who opts to defend his family and people by whatever means necessary. Vlazna also points out how the "bad" Palestinians are of darker skin colour in this novel. Her review, however, is a lone voice in a sea of praise extolling this novel. The Huffington Post predicts it will be the greatest seller of the decade. Sadly, they may be right, and, like The Help, it will eclipse authentic accounts of what it means to inhabit a world that considers you a lesser form of human.
Thus, a people's narrative is commandeered. When we are robbed of everything, broken and humiliated, the false saviours step in, colonise our wounds and bring our pain under their purview. And they profit from filling our cultural legacies with their racist assumptions, orientalist distortions and inglorious heroes of small subservient character.
Teju Cole: “The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening”
As close as I feel to African-American culture and as much as I think I know about anti-black racism, I cannot imagine presuming to know enough to write from an African-American character’s voice about deep current and historic pain that I have neither lived nor inherited, but in fact have benefited from by virtue of living in a country and in an economy built from the ineffable misery of the Maafa, holocaust of slavery.
I think such presumption cannot come from noble or enlightened sentiments. Although seemingly distant topics, both books come from a master narrative that perverts another people's truth to fit within the framework of a neoliberal white supremacy cloaked in sympathy and pseudo-solidarity.
Michelle Cohen-Corasanti's debut novel, The Almond Tree, is yet another example. The narrative creates sympathy with the oppressed (in this case, Palestinians) by enumerating the litany of injustices they must endure. Cohen-Corasanti, a Jewish White American woman of considerable privilege, said in an interview that she wrote this novel because she "wanted to bring about peace between Palestinians and Israelis" and to show that "we are all human beings and we're all equal."
In this context, a quote from novelist Teju Cole comes to mind: "The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm."
Cohen-Corasanti said she wanted to show how a "Palestinian and Israeli could overcome obstacles and work together to advance humanity." By "obstacles" she means the wholesale destruction of Palestinian society, use of the most advanced weaponry against principally unarmed civilians, demolition of homes, daily humiliation at hundreds of checkpoints, colour-coded license plates, Israeli-only roads, segregated buses, assassinations, imprisonment without charge or trial, theft of land and water, theft of homes and dignity, bombing of schools, curfews, deportations, multiple generations of refugees, and the general erasure of Palestine off the map.
Her idea was to create "the perfect Jewish woman" (Nora) for her protagonist, Ichmad, an unlikely, insufferable Palestinian man. Nora is later killed in a brazen insensitive event stolen from the life and murder of Rachel Corrie. Ichmad's next wife, Yasmine, is a simple-minded Palestinian who can't hold a candle to Nora. She "wasn't tall like Nora. Her facial features weren't delicate like Nora's; they were hidden in layers of baby fat. Her teeth were yellow and crooked and she was plump…How could I bring her to the States? How would she ever fit in at faculty parties?" On their wedding night, Ichmad pretends she is Nora. "Yasmine lay on the bed without movement, like dead meat." The insults, and Ichmad's contempt for his people, don't end.
As Teju Cole remarks: “The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.”
Regarding the protagonist's name, "Ichmad" is how Israelis pronounce Ahmad, the second most common name across the Arab world. Even Palestinian reviewers who liked this book couldn't stomach this Israelised version. Cohen-Corasanti claims "Ichmad" is an authentic pronounciation in the Triangle. I am familiar with the fellahi dialect in Um-el-Fahm, Taybeh and other Palestinian villages that make up the Triangle. No one pronounces Ahmad with "Ich" sound.
In fact, "Ichmad" is a form of an Arabic verb meaning to suffocate or subdue. Had the author consulted with a Palestinian or Arabic linguist, she'd have known that. But, according to her, in the seven years that it took to write this novel, she hired six editors: five Jewish, one Christian Fundamentalist, and all clearly lacking expertise in her subject matter. That alone speaks to the carelessness and arrogance with which Cohen-Corasanti approached Palestinian lives. That she did not conceive of hiring a Palestinian editor gives a lie to her avowed values of equality and partnership.
A Palestinian editor likely would have objected to another name: Professor Menachem Sharon (Menachem Begin meets Ariel Sharon - Grand Wizards of war criminals and wanton murders). Cohen-Corasanti mixes these two monsters to create a name for her Nobel Laureate professor character, who takes Ichmad under his wings.
Ichmad, whose family is impoverished by Israel, is a math prodigy who studies on a scholarship in an Israeli university in Jerusalem. Aside from the fact that most Palestinians in the West Bank cannot enter Jerusalem, much less go to university there (on a scholarship, no less), the notion that the path to success is necessarily through the oppressor's educational system is a typical supremacist assumption. It happens that even under the horrors and limitations of Israeli occupation, Palestinians have managed to build 26 institutions of higher education in the tiny enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza.
Since publication of The Almond Tree, the author has hired a Palestinian actor to "play" Ichmad in an interactive website, effectively commercializing Palestinian misery and humiliation.
Even irrelevant details are offensive. Only in the most orientalist imaginations would a Palestinian groom lift the veil of his bride with the tip of a sword. And only in the mind of a white American socialite does a poor brown Palestinian college student have only "homemade clothes" and must borrow someone's bellbottoms to wear to a party - as if "homemade clothes" are cheaper than a cheap pair of jeans; as if his family ran a sewing machine from their tent; as if residents of shantytowns the world over don't wear store-bought clothes.
An excellent review by Vacy Vlazna details other ways in which this racist, orientalist novel serves to make a hero of a self-loathing obsequious Palestinian cartoon of a man, and makes a pitiful villain of his brother, Abbas, who opts to defend his family and people by whatever means necessary. Vlazna also points out how the "bad" Palestinians are of darker skin colour in this novel. Her review, however, is a lone voice in a sea of praise extolling this novel. The Huffington Post predicts it will be the greatest seller of the decade. Sadly, they may be right, and, like The Help, it will eclipse authentic accounts of what it means to inhabit a world that considers you a lesser form of human.
Thus, a people's narrative is commandeered. When we are robbed of everything, broken and humiliated, the false saviours step in, colonise our wounds and bring our pain under their purview. And they profit from filling our cultural legacies with their racist assumptions, orientalist distortions and inglorious heroes of small subservient character.
Teju Cole: “The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening”
As close as I feel to African-American culture and as much as I think I know about anti-black racism, I cannot imagine presuming to know enough to write from an African-American character’s voice about deep current and historic pain that I have neither lived nor inherited, but in fact have benefited from by virtue of living in a country and in an economy built from the ineffable misery of the Maafa, holocaust of slavery.
I think such presumption cannot come from noble or enlightened sentiments. Although seemingly distant topics, both books come from a master narrative that perverts another people's truth to fit within the framework of a neoliberal white supremacy cloaked in sympathy and pseudo-solidarity.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 30, 2016
My Rating: 5 ☆☆☆☆☆
In One Word: Superb!
Review:
“I had no idea words could have so much power and beauty.”
I smiled and cried while reading. I was left speechless when I finished the book. Pondering over evey sentence I read, every bit of emotions I felt, I was over-whelmed how beautifully sad a novel can be.
The Almond Tree is a heart-wrenching, self-narrative story of a Palestinian kid, Ichmad Mahmud, his family and their struggles.
It is the story of unjust occupation.
It is the story of extremism on both sides.
It is the story of never giving up.
It is the story of two lovers.
It is the story of love vs hate.
Ichmad Mahmud is a 12 year old Palestinian who lives in a village with his parents and siblings. He is a genious kid with unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He loves solving math and physics problems.
One day, his younger sister Amal fell prey to the field mine near their house and was blown up into pieces. To bury Amal, they had to wait for the permit from Israeli soldiers and for the curfew to end. So- they spent the whole night with her dead body at home, comforting her that she is finally free.
After few days of Amal’s death, the Israeli soldiers took their home, their orange groves, relocating them to a small house on the hill. Nearby their new house, there stood an Almond Tree. After his father was sacked to jail, he was desperate to share the boiling agony in his heart, he be-friended the Almond Tree.
"I said to the almond tree, "Friend, speak to me of God, and the Almond Tree blossomed."
The Almond Tree became the companion of his sorrows, happiness and loneliness. He would climb and sit on it, looking over his old house and orange groves with his hand-made telescope. The Almond Tree stood there tall, witnessing everything silently. How his new house was demolished, his tent set on fire and burnt down to ashes many times. How he fell in love with an Israeli Jew.
This novel has lows and highs of gripping emotions. It shows you how the extremes on both sides affect the peace in the area. Whose fault is it when schools are bombed, depriving them of education and blissful childhood. With lack of education and "hope", they have no where to go and no path to choose except that of destruction, destruction of self and destruction of others.
Written by an Israeli Jew, this novel is unbiased and gives the glimpse of negatives and positives of both sides.
It is a must read for those who love intriguing and heart-touching stories. I have read this book for once and I would like to read it again but I don't find enough courage in myself to go through the pain of 10 and 12 year old souls again.
Ending my review with a quote from The Almond Tree:
"You can not go back and make a new start, but you can start now and make a new ending."
October 22, 2013
Something so terrible happens to a family in a small village in Palestine in the first chapter of this powerful novel and I thought they couldn' t endure anymore . I was wrong ; bad things just keep happening and the loss and suffering was overwhelming . Yet, I am glad that I kept reading - actually I couldn't put it down .
Ichmad , the oldest son , through a rash and immature decision , has to become the caretaker of his family who live in this occupied village. He is extraordinarily intelligent and as the story enfolds , he becomes an extraordinary man. The only way to save his family is for Ichmad to leave and go to the university , studying and working and sending nearly every penny home .
While the focus is on Ichmad and his family's suffering , the author who is an American Jewish writer , also depicts the loss and suffering of Ichmad's Jewish professor , who has lost his family .
This story is about more than the conflict , it is about family , friendship , loss and it is about forgiveness that Ichbad's father teaches him . It is heartbreaking but yet offers up hope . It's an emotionally tough book to read but well worth it.
Ichmad , the oldest son , through a rash and immature decision , has to become the caretaker of his family who live in this occupied village. He is extraordinarily intelligent and as the story enfolds , he becomes an extraordinary man. The only way to save his family is for Ichmad to leave and go to the university , studying and working and sending nearly every penny home .
While the focus is on Ichmad and his family's suffering , the author who is an American Jewish writer , also depicts the loss and suffering of Ichmad's Jewish professor , who has lost his family .
This story is about more than the conflict , it is about family , friendship , loss and it is about forgiveness that Ichbad's father teaches him . It is heartbreaking but yet offers up hope . It's an emotionally tough book to read but well worth it.
July 29, 2013
Death and hardship are the reality of Ichmad Hamid’s life growing up in a Palestinian village ruled over by the Israeli military. From birth, Ichmad has been taught that the Israelis are the enemy as he has seen his siblings killed or maimed by their brutality. But when his mathematical genius gives him the opportunity to study at the Hebrew university, his wrongly imprisoned father is the only person who insists that Ichmad should follow his dreams and espouse peace rather than conflict. However, he will be pitted against intolerance at every turn – even from inside his own family. The endless battle to use his intellect has the power to either save or destroy those he loves in a part of the world where conflict seems to be the only constant.
The Almond Tree is the debut novel Michelle Cohen Corasanti, an American of Jewish descent growing up in Utica, New York. She was raised in a strict Jewish household and knew nothing of the struggles of Palestinians until she studied in Israel in her teens. I bring up the author’s heritage only because it makes the writing in The Almond Tree all the more remarkable. The story of Ichmad Hamid and his family does not read like a fiction account by an author with a summary knowledge of what is going on. It reads as a first-person memoir by a man who lived every second of the struggle and powerfully relates every visceral emotion of a lifetime of uncertainty.
Corasanti’s writing flows beautifully and she captures the spirit of her characters in The Almond Tree. Throughout the story, I felt for the characters – I got angry when they were unfairly treated, I rejoiced at Ichmad’s successes and recoiled at the devastating events. Very simply, Corasanti made me care about this family as if they lived next door to me. No small feat considering I have virtually nothing in come with them other than being human. Even more, Corasanti never once becomes preachy or one-sided. There are heroes and villains on both sides and we see perceptions evolve throughout the book.
The Almond Tree demonstrates that there are many different ways to bring the struggle for justice forward. Ichmad exemplifies what duty to one’s family and honor to yourself and those around you can produce in the face of intolerance. Moreover, Corasanti is never heavy-handed. She knows she is writing a story first and this one is a real page-turner that happens to also have a message. As the days have gone on, the story of The Almond Tree has not left me. I dare anybody to read this book and not come away altered in some way by what is inside. That is what makes it great – that is why it receives a rare 5-star rating from me. It is one of the best books I have read – ever.
The Almond Tree is the debut novel Michelle Cohen Corasanti, an American of Jewish descent growing up in Utica, New York. She was raised in a strict Jewish household and knew nothing of the struggles of Palestinians until she studied in Israel in her teens. I bring up the author’s heritage only because it makes the writing in The Almond Tree all the more remarkable. The story of Ichmad Hamid and his family does not read like a fiction account by an author with a summary knowledge of what is going on. It reads as a first-person memoir by a man who lived every second of the struggle and powerfully relates every visceral emotion of a lifetime of uncertainty.
Corasanti’s writing flows beautifully and she captures the spirit of her characters in The Almond Tree. Throughout the story, I felt for the characters – I got angry when they were unfairly treated, I rejoiced at Ichmad’s successes and recoiled at the devastating events. Very simply, Corasanti made me care about this family as if they lived next door to me. No small feat considering I have virtually nothing in come with them other than being human. Even more, Corasanti never once becomes preachy or one-sided. There are heroes and villains on both sides and we see perceptions evolve throughout the book.
The Almond Tree demonstrates that there are many different ways to bring the struggle for justice forward. Ichmad exemplifies what duty to one’s family and honor to yourself and those around you can produce in the face of intolerance. Moreover, Corasanti is never heavy-handed. She knows she is writing a story first and this one is a real page-turner that happens to also have a message. As the days have gone on, the story of The Almond Tree has not left me. I dare anybody to read this book and not come away altered in some way by what is inside. That is what makes it great – that is why it receives a rare 5-star rating from me. It is one of the best books I have read – ever.
February 14, 2014
I have no pleasure to rate a book with one star, so I'll exceed myself on the explanations.
Before you complain about my rating or my review on my curated space, please read, learn and think about the real facts.
Don’t make a judgement based on what someone told you. Be impartial and listen to both sides. In fact, listen to all sides before you decide for yourself.
If you are rude, you're going to be flagged. If you want to discuss my review, do it politely. I’m always available and you can always convince me I’m wrong if you have the correct arguments.
Respect and toleration are what make relationships possible.
I was almost compelled to say this book is science-fiction because it doesn’t portrait the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but another completely different conflict and I haven't seen any human being in this book. There is no one so good, and there is no one so bad, unless they are psychos. We, human beings, are somewhere in between angels and demons.
But unfortunately, I can’t joke with this because this book's message is too serious and it is too jumbled to let it pass.
We need a stop in the dictionary, as I’ve seen people using the wrong terms in their reviews:
Israeli, used as a noun means: “a native or inhabitant of Israel, or a person of Israeli descent.”
Israelite is: [a] “a member of the ancient Hebrew nation, esp. in the period from the Exodus to the Babylonian Captivity ( c.12th to 6th centuries bc). [b] and [some consider it to be] an old-fashioned and sometimes offensive term for Jew.”
Palestinian, as a noun: “a member of the native Arab population of the region of Palestine (including the modern state of Israel).”
Jew is: “a member of the people and cultural community whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins through the ancient Hebrew people of Israel to Abraham.”
Muslim is: “a follower of the religion of Islam.”
I don’t agree in calling this conflict “Israeli-Palestinian”. IMHO, we diminish the whole dimension of the conflict if we stick with the name given to the land.
Is this about land? Yes. But it’s about a sacred, holy land; This conflict has deep roots in religion.
No one has never heard of a Catholic wanting possession of Israel or Palestine.
So, let’s lift the bride’s veil and call it by its correct name: This is a Jewish-Muslin conflict.
I’ll not discuss who is right or who is wrong, mainly because I believe both are wrong.
And if no president of the United States of America, no prime minister of Israel or no Palestine authority have reached an agreement so far; no great diplomat or no representative of the United Nations could end this daily battle until now, it’s not me that will hand you the solution.
Besides, this is a book review.
I fervently wish that I’m wrong, but this book is a loaded gun in the wrong hands.
In short, for those who doesn't know Hannah Arendt is: A German-Jewish born political theorist, she managed to escape from a concentration camp where she was held because of her ideas and moved to America. She wrote wonderful works, but her most famous one was Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, due to her sharp criticism of how Eichmann trial was held in Israel.
In this work, Arendt also criticized the way some Jewish leaders acted during the Holocaust.
This caused - and still causes - a considerable controversy and even animosity toward Arendt and her work in the Jewish community.
She was criticized by many Jewish public figures, charged with coldness and lack of sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust, which was never her intention.
She had regretted using the expression "banality of evil" until she died.
A small explanation on the quote:
Elegantly used as grammatical idea to hold two different thoughts together, the “accusative” and the “dative” are two of German’s four grammatical cases, in which pronouns and nouns are changed, or given specific endings, to signal their relationship to another part of a sentence.
Roughly, the accusative case is used when something is the direct object of a verb, when in action, when one thing “dominates”, to use a trendy word, or “accuses” another.
On the other hand, the dative case is used for indirect objects, and originally with objects to which or to whom something is given, or those who “submit” or are under the action of the other, the "accused".
Incidentally, acknowledging the submission (or the guilty accusation) doesn’t mean one is nulled by the dominator or that the dominant, again the trendy word, is always a brute, with no respect for the other, with a thirsty for pain and blood;
Let's not fool ourselves: Domination and submission exist on every relationship. Parental, marital, commercial and so on. Well-balanced and used with wiseness and respect, they are what makes a relationship work.
They have an inner poetry, when not measured by outside standards, but by their own.
Determining the forces of a relationship, or of a conflict, no matter how unalterable those may be, is a freedom that few achieve to reach. This acknowledgment doesn't mean that the submission has to be forever lived as such. No. Knowledge is the best way to understand, plan and act to free oneself if the submission was imposed, or to feel comfortable on one's skin if the submission is chosen.
I'm not talking about sex, slavery, conflicts or war. I'm talking about daily, normal relationships. Still.
Those two sides of a relationship are beautifully emphasized by Arendt when she ties this grammatical distinction to her often repeated contrast between violence and speech.
But they are also actions that can co-exist, side by side in a single course of action. Stupefied by my statement? Explanation will come soon.
If The Almond Tree where sci-fi, I would have given it a 3 star rating, as it is NOT, this barely deserves one star for the author’s… hmmm… creativity (?) at making fun of an edgy situation.
She even attempts at a not-funny-at-all joke by linking the names of Menahem Begin and Ariel Sharon, prime ministers of Israel, turning them into Professor Menahem Sharon, Ichmad's teacher.
I didn't understand if she was trying to honor or to offend the real persons.
We’re living in difficult times. A single sparkle can set those forever burning ashes of the Arab world into a uncontrollable bonfire and kill many.
And even transform this “located” war in something bigger.
Something I don’t even want to imagine.
I know Israel. I’ve been there more than once; the first time more than twenty-five years ago when my parents, Catholics, Brazilians, and Italian and Portuguese descendants decided to visit the region.
And I began to follow the truculency of the region very closely and with interest, not only because I’m a converted Jew, but because I'm a woman of the world.
I agree that there is a lack of toleration in that region.
In fact, toleration in general has been bleeding through our stressed and violent daily routine drain, as quickly as desert sand through a cracked hourglass, as we’ve been looking only in the narcissistic mirror of ourselves.
But this lack of toleration, of understanding on the Arab region, on that small piece of sacred land, that all are fighting for, that all want to take a bite, can hardly be put solely onto Jewish shoulders.
Stated that, about the book:
A 3 star rating for the sci-fi creativity because:
There are problems with plot consistency; typos; lack of research, causing even suspension of disbelief, one sided-characters, there is not one who is that good or that evil, unless it's a psycho;
The story lacks substance, the writing is childish and repetitive, she lost her hand and control of the story as characters transforms themselves in an unbelievable way (hmm… that’s reminds me of something and someone).
There is no helpful clarity for those who are not schooled in Middle East politics.
Either they'll believe in distorted facts, or they have to continually stop to search online to find more information about the story, including the setting, to fully understand the circumstances.
There are over-used clichés of need for cooperation and so many stereotypes that it became difficult and boring to read.
The author fills in with math and science questions completely unnecessary and that did not move the story or make it more believable - only less.
But all that is irrelevant to my review, so I closed my eyes to them on my 2nd reading.
The author, Michelle Cohen Corasanti, daughter of American orthodox Jews, says she is Jewish, highly educated in Harvard as she affirms on her website http://thealmondtreebook.com and that she knows the Jewish-Muslin conflict deeply and is dedicated to end it, but there is such a lack of perspective in her book that I can only call it flat and look at Corasanti's credentials with disbelief.
I didn’t go to Harvard website to research her because I have no reason not to believe in her words, but I doubt that she understood what she was supposed to learn, which is quite different.
The Israelis, except for two or three persons, are portrayed as completely cruel and unfeeling, the archetypes of evil.
The plot written by a Jewish was so one-sided in its anti-Israeli sentiment, and why not say it, ANTI-SEMITIC, that it read more like Nazi propaganda than a novel.
I don't think Israel is perfect.
I'm open-minded and I was eager to have a look on a different side so I tried to overlook it on my first reading, but as I had to write the review and I was really unable to pinpoint what had me so annoyed with the book, I gave it a second reading.
And as Umberto Eco says, a book is only never completely understood on its first reading.
- She states that all she wanted when she wrote her book was to "bring peace between Palestinians and Israelis" and to show that "we are all human beings and we're all equal.” I would applaud if she really meant it. But that is irrelevant.
I don’t presume she wants to share her knowledge for free, does she? But that is irrelevant too.
She is totally entitled to her royalties.
- This book is being announced and heavily promoted as the reality of the Jewish oppression on the Palestinian people with the real POV of a Jewish author who lived 7 years through the conflict... Really?!;
- To promote her debut novel, The Almond Tree, she unashamedly uses her "background", and more... she uses it to give historical facts a distorted, irresponsible and unreal truthfulness.
This book has only the author's personal POVs and insights and that has to be said, so people do not confuse it with reality.
- She may have meant well, and I choose to believe so until proven the opposite, but the book has no peace message. Much on the contrary, but I will arrive there soon.
If the book were half as helpful to peace as it is being said, I would be the first to give it five stars and recommend it.
- Imho, Corassanti, as a promoter of peace, lacks its first and foremost important quality: humbleness.
She stated she knows how “Palestinian and Israeli could overcome obstacles and work together to advance humanity.” Maybe the US government should employ her immediately…
- Novels are fictional works of art, and although written with noble or enlightened sentiments, they bring with them the author’s truth or point of view, and should be treated as such: nothing more than fiction.
Novels lack what biography or historical books should always have: the compromise to stick with the truth. This book is not a treaty on how to promote peace. This books distorts historical facts galore.
AND it wears its mask of supposedly injustices against the Palestinian people askance.
It makeups itself and shows unreality heavily painted with sympathy and solidarity as its main character is a genius, wonderful, spectacular man telling the heart-wrenching, silly, childish view of the story of an oppressed-oppressor people, (whose extremists have no shame to use women-bombs or armed children against unarmed civilians. But again, how their extremists act is not my main point.)
- The story is a prejudiced, one-sided, unbalanced POV, focused mainly on the life of two Palestinian males: the masterpiece Ichmad and the one-sided cliché character, Abbas.
(About the leading character's name: I believe Corasanti meant Ahmad, that is also Mohammad, the last and most important Islam prophet. A Palestinian reviewer said she probably meant Ichmad to insult the Palestinians - according to the reviewer in Arab "Ichmad" has a similar sound to the verb that means "subdue". I cannot blame the reviewer's tone against this book or her angry words.)
It's because of people with such funny ideas that we have this terrible conflict on the region...
- And what surprises me, it's how can many people be FOOLED by Corasanti. She is not only being prejudiced against Jews, BUT she is being highly prejudiced against the Palestinians. Abbas couldn’t have been drawn in “grayer” tones, again using a trendy word.
Here on her GRs dashboard and in her interactive website, a Palestinian actor plays Ichmad, divulging the Palestinian misery.
Why? This is not the way to solve any conflict.
Maybe some of you have noticed my using of trendy words. Why did I use them?
Because this book, as 50 Shades of Grey, is narcissistic.
This is about Corrassanti.
Her life in Israel; her problems with her Palestinian friends, her extremely orthodox Jew family, her own rebellion against the education she received; her own fantasies.
This is not about any conflict, any religion or any people. It is a narcissistic, badly written work of science-fiction.
Words have power. And speech and violence as Arendt so wisely showed so many times in her many works can walk hand-in-hand, and can be cloaked under a thin veil… of a Jewish or Muslim bride?
Or maybe as Corassanti prejudicially narrated: under the layers of baby fat of the ugly, simple-minded, short Yasmine, Ichmad’s Palestinian bride, who would never compare herself with Nora, his over-the-top perfect, beautiful, tall, Jewish love-of-his-life.
To add insult to injury, on their nuptial night of their arranged wedding, otherworldly intelligent hero Ichmad fantasies of his perfect, dead Nora while he has a still Yasmine beneath him on bed.
STOP!
LET'S STOP FOR A MOMENT AND BREATHE DEEP!
BECAUSE the leading character’s attitude and the comparison done by the author, in a book which is intended to promote peace, is so REPULSIVE that it was what made me realize that I was reading a ticking bomb. That is what got me nagged and annoyed with this book. It’s narcissistically dense. It’s a fantasied autobiography. http://thealmondtreebook.com/author/
How did Hitler convince so many Jews to segregate themselves? WORDS.
How did Hitler gain so many followers? WORDS.
When he proposed violence, he had already hypnotized a whole army, a nation, with his ideas.
Not even the wise (?) rabbis could see what he was doing because they were hearing what they wanted: Jews are to stick with Jews.
But in an even more dangerous way, Corasanti, a Jewish-American author, has no knowledge of what she is doing, she has no idea of the power of her prejudiced words; of how can them be used against what she is supposedly intending, peace (?), destroying the almost nothing had been achieved so far in that mined ground.
Intelligent Muslim, lucid Jews, wise Israelis, Palestinian or rather, rational, sane PERSONS know she is not doing this for peace, as ELJames did not write 50Shades to defend BDSM practitioners or women’s right to have sex as they wished.
Want to write an autobiography? So, do it. It would be much more commendable and interesting to read about the POV of a Jewish woman that had lived in Israel for 7 years and had great issues with her religion, her strict orthodox parents and the way she has grown.
Want to write about your sexual fantasies? Do it. For sure, voyeurs and stalkers will buy your book.
But don’t try to justify your prejudicially, badly written works saying you’re defending other’s people rights or promoting peace.
This narcissistic authorial catharsis that have been happening recently is confusing the minds of many - special teenagers and YA - that have no such knowledge to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
I would dare say: it’s unhealthy therapy done in public and at the readers’ cost.
To end this review, a last thought:
Arendt raised the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions and inaction.
I agree with her point of view and I believe evil resides - in most cases - in simple thoughtlessness.
Evil can start, for example, with a simple omission. That is why I am not omitting myself.
It could have started with me, as a reader, not being knowledgeable of the intended submission I was being forced to. That's why I'm saying NO to those many 5 star ratings; NO to those who write for their own narcissist purposes (please don't confuse with commercial, or artistic).
I'm a free, intelligent, thinking woman and I refuse to be fooled or lead by a supposedly heart-wrenching beautiful story told by a noble woman, that is the one who holds the formula of secret, magic powder which will bring peace between the ancient feud of Israel and Palestine, of Jews and Muslims.
Life is not a fairy tale. We cannot live only on fantasies.
Please, let's grow up.
Let's talk and behave like adults. We are not children or teenagers anymore. We had the opportunity to dream of winning the gold medal in the school writing concourse or kissing hurriedly the first boyfriend on the front door step before Daddy opens it.
Now, as adults, we have the responsibility of building a better world for our grandchildren, without excluding anyone.
This review costed me more than twenty hours to write because this subject is explosive and I didn’t want to add more fuel to it, so the facts are all well researched and my first opinions have been well temperated. Or so I hope.
I think I've been clear, but let me be clearer: I don’t recommend this book. At all.
For those who want to read more on what is the reality of the conflict and this book, there are a few excellent, knowledgeable reviews, please see them in the comment as I had no more review space left.
Before you complain about my rating or my review on my curated space, please read, learn and think about the real facts.
Don’t make a judgement based on what someone told you. Be impartial and listen to both sides. In fact, listen to all sides before you decide for yourself.
If you are rude, you're going to be flagged. If you want to discuss my review, do it politely. I’m always available and you can always convince me I’m wrong if you have the correct arguments.
Respect and toleration are what make relationships possible.
I was almost compelled to say this book is science-fiction because it doesn’t portrait the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but another completely different conflict and I haven't seen any human being in this book. There is no one so good, and there is no one so bad, unless they are psychos. We, human beings, are somewhere in between angels and demons.
But unfortunately, I can’t joke with this because this book's message is too serious and it is too jumbled to let it pass.
We need a stop in the dictionary, as I’ve seen people using the wrong terms in their reviews:
Israeli, used as a noun means: “a native or inhabitant of Israel, or a person of Israeli descent.”
Israelite is: [a] “a member of the ancient Hebrew nation, esp. in the period from the Exodus to the Babylonian Captivity ( c.12th to 6th centuries bc). [b] and [some consider it to be] an old-fashioned and sometimes offensive term for Jew.”
Palestinian, as a noun: “a member of the native Arab population of the region of Palestine (including the modern state of Israel).”
Jew is: “a member of the people and cultural community whose traditional religion is Judaism and who trace their origins through the ancient Hebrew people of Israel to Abraham.”
Muslim is: “a follower of the religion of Islam.”
I don’t agree in calling this conflict “Israeli-Palestinian”. IMHO, we diminish the whole dimension of the conflict if we stick with the name given to the land.
Is this about land? Yes. But it’s about a sacred, holy land; This conflict has deep roots in religion.
No one has never heard of a Catholic wanting possession of Israel or Palestine.
So, let’s lift the bride’s veil and call it by its correct name: This is a Jewish-Muslin conflict.
I’ll not discuss who is right or who is wrong, mainly because I believe both are wrong.
And if no president of the United States of America, no prime minister of Israel or no Palestine authority have reached an agreement so far; no great diplomat or no representative of the United Nations could end this daily battle until now, it’s not me that will hand you the solution.
Besides, this is a book review.
I fervently wish that I’m wrong, but this book is a loaded gun in the wrong hands.
“The accusative of violence, like that of love, destroys the in-between, crushes or burns it, renders the other defenseless, strips itself of protection.
In contrast to this stands the dative of saying and speaking, which confirms the in-between, moves within it.
Then again there is the accusative of the singing poem, which removes and releases what it sings from the in-between and its relations, without confirming anything. When poetry and not philosophy absolutizes, there’s rescue.”
Hannah Arendt, Denktagebuch (on free translation: Thinking Diary, or Book of Thoughts), vol. 1 of her “Notebooks”, p. 428 August 1953.
In short, for those who doesn't know Hannah Arendt is: A German-Jewish born political theorist, she managed to escape from a concentration camp where she was held because of her ideas and moved to America. She wrote wonderful works, but her most famous one was Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, due to her sharp criticism of how Eichmann trial was held in Israel.
In this work, Arendt also criticized the way some Jewish leaders acted during the Holocaust.
This caused - and still causes - a considerable controversy and even animosity toward Arendt and her work in the Jewish community.
She was criticized by many Jewish public figures, charged with coldness and lack of sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust, which was never her intention.
She had regretted using the expression "banality of evil" until she died.
A small explanation on the quote:
Elegantly used as grammatical idea to hold two different thoughts together, the “accusative” and the “dative” are two of German’s four grammatical cases, in which pronouns and nouns are changed, or given specific endings, to signal their relationship to another part of a sentence.
Roughly, the accusative case is used when something is the direct object of a verb, when in action, when one thing “dominates”, to use a trendy word, or “accuses” another.
On the other hand, the dative case is used for indirect objects, and originally with objects to which or to whom something is given, or those who “submit” or are under the action of the other, the "accused".
Incidentally, acknowledging the submission (or the guilty accusation) doesn’t mean one is nulled by the dominator or that the dominant, again the trendy word, is always a brute, with no respect for the other, with a thirsty for pain and blood;
Let's not fool ourselves: Domination and submission exist on every relationship. Parental, marital, commercial and so on. Well-balanced and used with wiseness and respect, they are what makes a relationship work.
They have an inner poetry, when not measured by outside standards, but by their own.
Determining the forces of a relationship, or of a conflict, no matter how unalterable those may be, is a freedom that few achieve to reach. This acknowledgment doesn't mean that the submission has to be forever lived as such. No. Knowledge is the best way to understand, plan and act to free oneself if the submission was imposed, or to feel comfortable on one's skin if the submission is chosen.
I'm not talking about sex, slavery, conflicts or war. I'm talking about daily, normal relationships. Still.
Those two sides of a relationship are beautifully emphasized by Arendt when she ties this grammatical distinction to her often repeated contrast between violence and speech.
But they are also actions that can co-exist, side by side in a single course of action. Stupefied by my statement? Explanation will come soon.
If The Almond Tree where sci-fi, I would have given it a 3 star rating, as it is NOT, this barely deserves one star for the author’s… hmmm… creativity (?) at making fun of an edgy situation.
She even attempts at a not-funny-at-all joke by linking the names of Menahem Begin and Ariel Sharon, prime ministers of Israel, turning them into Professor Menahem Sharon, Ichmad's teacher.
I didn't understand if she was trying to honor or to offend the real persons.
We’re living in difficult times. A single sparkle can set those forever burning ashes of the Arab world into a uncontrollable bonfire and kill many.
And even transform this “located” war in something bigger.
Something I don’t even want to imagine.
I know Israel. I’ve been there more than once; the first time more than twenty-five years ago when my parents, Catholics, Brazilians, and Italian and Portuguese descendants decided to visit the region.
And I began to follow the truculency of the region very closely and with interest, not only because I’m a converted Jew, but because I'm a woman of the world.
I agree that there is a lack of toleration in that region.
In fact, toleration in general has been bleeding through our stressed and violent daily routine drain, as quickly as desert sand through a cracked hourglass, as we’ve been looking only in the narcissistic mirror of ourselves.
But this lack of toleration, of understanding on the Arab region, on that small piece of sacred land, that all are fighting for, that all want to take a bite, can hardly be put solely onto Jewish shoulders.
Stated that, about the book:
A 3 star rating for the sci-fi creativity because:
There are problems with plot consistency; typos; lack of research, causing even suspension of disbelief, one sided-characters, there is not one who is that good or that evil, unless it's a psycho;
The story lacks substance, the writing is childish and repetitive, she lost her hand and control of the story as characters transforms themselves in an unbelievable way (hmm… that’s reminds me of something and someone).
There is no helpful clarity for those who are not schooled in Middle East politics.
Either they'll believe in distorted facts, or they have to continually stop to search online to find more information about the story, including the setting, to fully understand the circumstances.
There are over-used clichés of need for cooperation and so many stereotypes that it became difficult and boring to read.
The author fills in with math and science questions completely unnecessary and that did not move the story or make it more believable - only less.
But all that is irrelevant to my review, so I closed my eyes to them on my 2nd reading.
The author, Michelle Cohen Corasanti, daughter of American orthodox Jews, says she is Jewish, highly educated in Harvard as she affirms on her website http://thealmondtreebook.com and that she knows the Jewish-Muslin conflict deeply and is dedicated to end it, but there is such a lack of perspective in her book that I can only call it flat and look at Corasanti's credentials with disbelief.
I didn’t go to Harvard website to research her because I have no reason not to believe in her words, but I doubt that she understood what she was supposed to learn, which is quite different.
The Israelis, except for two or three persons, are portrayed as completely cruel and unfeeling, the archetypes of evil.
The plot written by a Jewish was so one-sided in its anti-Israeli sentiment, and why not say it, ANTI-SEMITIC, that it read more like Nazi propaganda than a novel.
I don't think Israel is perfect.
I'm open-minded and I was eager to have a look on a different side so I tried to overlook it on my first reading, but as I had to write the review and I was really unable to pinpoint what had me so annoyed with the book, I gave it a second reading.
And as Umberto Eco says, a book is only never completely understood on its first reading.
- She states that all she wanted when she wrote her book was to "bring peace between Palestinians and Israelis" and to show that "we are all human beings and we're all equal.” I would applaud if she really meant it. But that is irrelevant.
I don’t presume she wants to share her knowledge for free, does she? But that is irrelevant too.
She is totally entitled to her royalties.
- This book is being announced and heavily promoted as the reality of the Jewish oppression on the Palestinian people with the real POV of a Jewish author who lived 7 years through the conflict... Really?!;
- To promote her debut novel, The Almond Tree, she unashamedly uses her "background", and more... she uses it to give historical facts a distorted, irresponsible and unreal truthfulness.
This book has only the author's personal POVs and insights and that has to be said, so people do not confuse it with reality.
- She may have meant well, and I choose to believe so until proven the opposite, but the book has no peace message. Much on the contrary, but I will arrive there soon.
If the book were half as helpful to peace as it is being said, I would be the first to give it five stars and recommend it.
- Imho, Corassanti, as a promoter of peace, lacks its first and foremost important quality: humbleness.
She stated she knows how “Palestinian and Israeli could overcome obstacles and work together to advance humanity.” Maybe the US government should employ her immediately…
- Novels are fictional works of art, and although written with noble or enlightened sentiments, they bring with them the author’s truth or point of view, and should be treated as such: nothing more than fiction.
Novels lack what biography or historical books should always have: the compromise to stick with the truth. This book is not a treaty on how to promote peace. This books distorts historical facts galore.
AND it wears its mask of supposedly injustices against the Palestinian people askance.
It makeups itself and shows unreality heavily painted with sympathy and solidarity as its main character is a genius, wonderful, spectacular man telling the heart-wrenching, silly, childish view of the story of an oppressed-oppressor people, (whose extremists have no shame to use women-bombs or armed children against unarmed civilians. But again, how their extremists act is not my main point.)
- The story is a prejudiced, one-sided, unbalanced POV, focused mainly on the life of two Palestinian males: the masterpiece Ichmad and the one-sided cliché character, Abbas.
(About the leading character's name: I believe Corasanti meant Ahmad, that is also Mohammad, the last and most important Islam prophet. A Palestinian reviewer said she probably meant Ichmad to insult the Palestinians - according to the reviewer in Arab "Ichmad" has a similar sound to the verb that means "subdue". I cannot blame the reviewer's tone against this book or her angry words.)
It's because of people with such funny ideas that we have this terrible conflict on the region...
- And what surprises me, it's how can many people be FOOLED by Corasanti. She is not only being prejudiced against Jews, BUT she is being highly prejudiced against the Palestinians. Abbas couldn’t have been drawn in “grayer” tones, again using a trendy word.
Here on her GRs dashboard and in her interactive website, a Palestinian actor plays Ichmad, divulging the Palestinian misery.
Why? This is not the way to solve any conflict.
Corasanti's badly written book is throwing more fuel on the already burning conflict.
AND THIS IS EXTREMELY RELEVANT.
Maybe some of you have noticed my using of trendy words. Why did I use them?
Because this book, as 50 Shades of Grey, is narcissistic.
This is about Corrassanti.
Her life in Israel; her problems with her Palestinian friends, her extremely orthodox Jew family, her own rebellion against the education she received; her own fantasies.
This is not about any conflict, any religion or any people. It is a narcissistic, badly written work of science-fiction.
Words have power. And speech and violence as Arendt so wisely showed so many times in her many works can walk hand-in-hand, and can be cloaked under a thin veil… of a Jewish or Muslim bride?
Or maybe as Corassanti prejudicially narrated: under the layers of baby fat of the ugly, simple-minded, short Yasmine, Ichmad’s Palestinian bride, who would never compare herself with Nora, his over-the-top perfect, beautiful, tall, Jewish love-of-his-life.
To add insult to injury, on their nuptial night of their arranged wedding, otherworldly intelligent hero Ichmad fantasies of his perfect, dead Nora while he has a still Yasmine beneath him on bed.
STOP!
LET'S STOP FOR A MOMENT AND BREATHE DEEP!
BECAUSE the leading character’s attitude and the comparison done by the author, in a book which is intended to promote peace, is so REPULSIVE that it was what made me realize that I was reading a ticking bomb. That is what got me nagged and annoyed with this book. It’s narcissistically dense. It’s a fantasied autobiography. http://thealmondtreebook.com/author/
How did Hitler convince so many Jews to segregate themselves? WORDS.
How did Hitler gain so many followers? WORDS.
When he proposed violence, he had already hypnotized a whole army, a nation, with his ideas.
Not even the wise (?) rabbis could see what he was doing because they were hearing what they wanted: Jews are to stick with Jews.
But in an even more dangerous way, Corasanti, a Jewish-American author, has no knowledge of what she is doing, she has no idea of the power of her prejudiced words; of how can them be used against what she is supposedly intending, peace (?), destroying the almost nothing had been achieved so far in that mined ground.
Intelligent Muslim, lucid Jews, wise Israelis, Palestinian or rather, rational, sane PERSONS know she is not doing this for peace, as ELJames did not write 50Shades to defend BDSM practitioners or women’s right to have sex as they wished.
Want to write an autobiography? So, do it. It would be much more commendable and interesting to read about the POV of a Jewish woman that had lived in Israel for 7 years and had great issues with her religion, her strict orthodox parents and the way she has grown.
Want to write about your sexual fantasies? Do it. For sure, voyeurs and stalkers will buy your book.
But don’t try to justify your prejudicially, badly written works saying you’re defending other’s people rights or promoting peace.
This narcissistic authorial catharsis that have been happening recently is confusing the minds of many - special teenagers and YA - that have no such knowledge to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
I would dare say: it’s unhealthy therapy done in public and at the readers’ cost.
To end this review, a last thought:
Arendt raised the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions and inaction.
I agree with her point of view and I believe evil resides - in most cases - in simple thoughtlessness.
Evil can start, for example, with a simple omission. That is why I am not omitting myself.
It could have started with me, as a reader, not being knowledgeable of the intended submission I was being forced to. That's why I'm saying NO to those many 5 star ratings; NO to those who write for their own narcissist purposes (please don't confuse with commercial, or artistic).
I'm a free, intelligent, thinking woman and I refuse to be fooled or lead by a supposedly heart-wrenching beautiful story told by a noble woman, that is the one who holds the formula of secret, magic powder which will bring peace between the ancient feud of Israel and Palestine, of Jews and Muslims.
Life is not a fairy tale. We cannot live only on fantasies.
Please, let's grow up.
Let's talk and behave like adults. We are not children or teenagers anymore. We had the opportunity to dream of winning the gold medal in the school writing concourse or kissing hurriedly the first boyfriend on the front door step before Daddy opens it.
Now, as adults, we have the responsibility of building a better world for our grandchildren, without excluding anyone.
This review costed me more than twenty hours to write because this subject is explosive and I didn’t want to add more fuel to it, so the facts are all well researched and my first opinions have been well temperated. Or so I hope.
I think I've been clear, but let me be clearer: I don’t recommend this book. At all.
For those who want to read more on what is the reality of the conflict and this book, there are a few excellent, knowledgeable reviews, please see them in the comment as I had no more review space left.
November 5, 2015
I looked forward to reading this book because of the subject matter; unfortunately, the novel was disappointing.
The book is the fictional memoir of a Palestinian named Ichmad Hamid. Covering the years from 1955 to 2009, the focus is on the extreme suffering of Ichmad’s large family at the hands of the Israeli occupiers. Crisis follows crisis, although Ichmad is able to better his life because of his intelligence.
A major problem is the weak characterization. Ichmad’s portrayal is unrealistic as evidenced in the repeated references to his exceptional abilities. From the beginning Ichmad sees himself as different: “I knew from a young age that I wasn’t like the other boys in my village” (14). He is “promoted by three grades” (19) and, because he becomes a backgammon champion, he becomes “a welcome and honoured guest . . . sort of a legend” (19) at the village tea house. His father speaks of his eldest son’s “extraordinary mathematical mind” (30) and his mother calls him “’my masterpiece’” (31). The village teacher speaks of him as a genius (112) who will make his people proud (69). Despite his limited education because he has to go to work to help support his family, he aces a mathematics competition, graduates at the top of his class (198), and in his research makes “tremendous progress” (263). And he is nominated for a Nobel Prize “each of the last ten years” (338)!
To make matters worse, Ichmad is exceptional in other ways. Twice he is a hero: “[W]ithout fear,” he rescues a girl from a rabid jackal (80), and later he saves two students from a fire (197-198). Twice it is mentioned that he works “around the clock” (196, 289). His generosity knows no bounds: he buys his nephews convertible Mercedes (324) and pays for the university education of seventeen nieces and nephews. In his sixties, his body is “firm and strong from years of running” (317), though not once is reference made to his running to stay in shape.
Character transformations are also incredible. A man “well known for his . . . dislike of Arabs” (137) who may have beaten and arrested Ichmad’s father (159) becomes Ichmad’s “closest friend” (344)? He is not the only one to undergo such a miraculous change. When Ichmad first meets Yasmine, he says that everything about her “screamed ignorance. Her veil, her thick, unplucked eyebrows, her traditional robe. . . . Her teeth were yellow and were crooked and she was plump” (271). She has “a ready array of excuses” (276) to not adapt to her new life in the United States, but later she is described as wearing “tight black trousers” (305) and having earned a “master’s degree in elementary education” (310).
And then there are the gaps and inconsistencies. Abbas “can barely walk” (253) yet twice he travels a considerable distance to find his brother Ichmad (154, 187), and both times he knows exactly where to find him at different locations on the university campus. The village teacher tells Ichmad, “’If you win, I’ll find jobs for your brothers in my cousin’s moving company’” (110), yet he doesn’t keep his promise when his prize pupil wins the mathematics competition? A woman is described as wearing a “lacy undergarment that conformed perfectly to the round fullness of her breasts” (235), but she never wore bras (278)? A family agrees not to tell a man about the death of his daughter “until he was released” (57). When he is released fourteen years later, his first words to his family are about the death of the daughter (207). When was he told? A professor accuses Ichmad of cheating. A classmate, without ever being told about the accusation, comments that the professor has become lazy (163). That classmate “’figured out what happened’” (174), but the reader is never told how Ichmad is cleared.
The writing style is repetitious. When surprised, characters stare “with their mouths open” (118). On the same page, another person is described: “His mouth was open” (118). A classmate’s “mouth gaped open” (147) in awe at Ichmad’s skills at backgammon. His brother stares at him “open-mouthed” (189). And the protagonist stares with “mouth agape” (186). When Ichmad first sees a woman, she is described as “the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen” (79) or “the loveliest girl I’d ever seen” (218). Dialogue is unnatural. Why would Ichmad have to tell his brother, who was there, “’Don ’t forget, everything we owned was destroyed’” (77) or that the Jews “’control over ninety per cent of the land’” (81)? Then there are the lengthy advanced math problems (117 – 118, 139, 201) which serve virtually no purpose in a work of fiction.
Symbolism is simplistic. The almond tree and olive trees at the back of Ichmad’s family home are the major symbols. Ichmad says, “They reminded me of my people. . . . I’d marveled that despite their exposure to beatings, arid landscape and fierce heat, the trees survived and bore new fruit year after year, century after century. I knew their strength lay in their roots which were so deep that even if the trees were cut down, they survived and sent forth shoots to create new generations. I always believed that my people’s strength, like the olive trees’, lay in our roots” (207 – 208). The symbol should speak for itself; it should not need to be explained.
There is no doubt that the author is passionate about the Palestine-Israel conflict. Certainly, the Palestinian perspective needs to be given, and to have a Jewish American attempt to do so is daring. It is unfortunate that the skills required to write a good novel are missing.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
The book is the fictional memoir of a Palestinian named Ichmad Hamid. Covering the years from 1955 to 2009, the focus is on the extreme suffering of Ichmad’s large family at the hands of the Israeli occupiers. Crisis follows crisis, although Ichmad is able to better his life because of his intelligence.
A major problem is the weak characterization. Ichmad’s portrayal is unrealistic as evidenced in the repeated references to his exceptional abilities. From the beginning Ichmad sees himself as different: “I knew from a young age that I wasn’t like the other boys in my village” (14). He is “promoted by three grades” (19) and, because he becomes a backgammon champion, he becomes “a welcome and honoured guest . . . sort of a legend” (19) at the village tea house. His father speaks of his eldest son’s “extraordinary mathematical mind” (30) and his mother calls him “’my masterpiece’” (31). The village teacher speaks of him as a genius (112) who will make his people proud (69). Despite his limited education because he has to go to work to help support his family, he aces a mathematics competition, graduates at the top of his class (198), and in his research makes “tremendous progress” (263). And he is nominated for a Nobel Prize “each of the last ten years” (338)!
To make matters worse, Ichmad is exceptional in other ways. Twice he is a hero: “[W]ithout fear,” he rescues a girl from a rabid jackal (80), and later he saves two students from a fire (197-198). Twice it is mentioned that he works “around the clock” (196, 289). His generosity knows no bounds: he buys his nephews convertible Mercedes (324) and pays for the university education of seventeen nieces and nephews. In his sixties, his body is “firm and strong from years of running” (317), though not once is reference made to his running to stay in shape.
Character transformations are also incredible. A man “well known for his . . . dislike of Arabs” (137) who may have beaten and arrested Ichmad’s father (159) becomes Ichmad’s “closest friend” (344)? He is not the only one to undergo such a miraculous change. When Ichmad first meets Yasmine, he says that everything about her “screamed ignorance. Her veil, her thick, unplucked eyebrows, her traditional robe. . . . Her teeth were yellow and were crooked and she was plump” (271). She has “a ready array of excuses” (276) to not adapt to her new life in the United States, but later she is described as wearing “tight black trousers” (305) and having earned a “master’s degree in elementary education” (310).
And then there are the gaps and inconsistencies. Abbas “can barely walk” (253) yet twice he travels a considerable distance to find his brother Ichmad (154, 187), and both times he knows exactly where to find him at different locations on the university campus. The village teacher tells Ichmad, “’If you win, I’ll find jobs for your brothers in my cousin’s moving company’” (110), yet he doesn’t keep his promise when his prize pupil wins the mathematics competition? A woman is described as wearing a “lacy undergarment that conformed perfectly to the round fullness of her breasts” (235), but she never wore bras (278)? A family agrees not to tell a man about the death of his daughter “until he was released” (57). When he is released fourteen years later, his first words to his family are about the death of the daughter (207). When was he told? A professor accuses Ichmad of cheating. A classmate, without ever being told about the accusation, comments that the professor has become lazy (163). That classmate “’figured out what happened’” (174), but the reader is never told how Ichmad is cleared.
The writing style is repetitious. When surprised, characters stare “with their mouths open” (118). On the same page, another person is described: “His mouth was open” (118). A classmate’s “mouth gaped open” (147) in awe at Ichmad’s skills at backgammon. His brother stares at him “open-mouthed” (189). And the protagonist stares with “mouth agape” (186). When Ichmad first sees a woman, she is described as “the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen” (79) or “the loveliest girl I’d ever seen” (218). Dialogue is unnatural. Why would Ichmad have to tell his brother, who was there, “’Don ’t forget, everything we owned was destroyed’” (77) or that the Jews “’control over ninety per cent of the land’” (81)? Then there are the lengthy advanced math problems (117 – 118, 139, 201) which serve virtually no purpose in a work of fiction.
Symbolism is simplistic. The almond tree and olive trees at the back of Ichmad’s family home are the major symbols. Ichmad says, “They reminded me of my people. . . . I’d marveled that despite their exposure to beatings, arid landscape and fierce heat, the trees survived and bore new fruit year after year, century after century. I knew their strength lay in their roots which were so deep that even if the trees were cut down, they survived and sent forth shoots to create new generations. I always believed that my people’s strength, like the olive trees’, lay in our roots” (207 – 208). The symbol should speak for itself; it should not need to be explained.
There is no doubt that the author is passionate about the Palestine-Israel conflict. Certainly, the Palestinian perspective needs to be given, and to have a Jewish American attempt to do so is daring. It is unfortunate that the skills required to write a good novel are missing.
Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).
May 14, 2017
Heart breaking & reality based. But it didn't hit me the way it should be.
I'm in between 3 & 4 stars.
Nevertheless this book has many beautiful lines.
"Courage, I realised, was not the absence of fear: it was the absence of selfishness; putting someone else’s interest before one’s own."
"Don’t allow guilt to enter your heart, because it’s a disease, like cancer, that’ll eat away at you until there’s nothing left."
‘It’s about his sentence, isn’t it?’ ‘Tell me what it says.’
Fourteen years. That was 730 weeks rounded down. 5,113 days; 122,712 hours; 7,363,720 minutes; 441,824,200 seconds. Which figure sounded like the least amount of time? I took a long, deep breath and tried to steady my voice. ‘Fourteen years.’
‘Good things make choosing difficult, bad things leave no choice.'
‘What’s better? To forgive and
forget, or to resent and remember?’
I'm in between 3 & 4 stars.
Nevertheless this book has many beautiful lines.
"Courage, I realised, was not the absence of fear: it was the absence of selfishness; putting someone else’s interest before one’s own."
"Don’t allow guilt to enter your heart, because it’s a disease, like cancer, that’ll eat away at you until there’s nothing left."
‘It’s about his sentence, isn’t it?’ ‘Tell me what it says.’
Fourteen years. That was 730 weeks rounded down. 5,113 days; 122,712 hours; 7,363,720 minutes; 441,824,200 seconds. Which figure sounded like the least amount of time? I took a long, deep breath and tried to steady my voice. ‘Fourteen years.’
‘Good things make choosing difficult, bad things leave no choice.'
‘What’s better? To forgive and
forget, or to resent and remember?’
May 28, 2016
I think I was the only Goodread's member to not receive a copy of this as part of the Goodreads Giveaway. However, my husband was a fortunate recipient of the book. I am not sure that all the political facts were accurate in this book but I do know I loved the story. Highly recommend this book that boasts of courage and perseverance. Favorite quotes from book, "Good things make choosing difficult, bad things leave no choice" and "Courage....was not the absence of fear: it was the absence of selfishness; putting someone else's interest before one's own."
April 15, 2013
“Throughout history the conquerors have always treated the conquered this way. The bad ones need to believe we’re inferior to justify the way they treat us. If they only could realize that we’re all the same.”
The story follows the life of Palestinian Ichmad Hamad and his family over the span of half a century, living in a Palestinian village controlled by the Israeli army. Of his village Ichmad says, “Only five years earlier, it had been filled with olive trees. Now it was filled with landmines like the one that killed my baby sister, Amal.”
Ichmad is highly intelligent, and has Einstein as one of his role models. He sets about trying to use his intellect to keep his family afloat when his father (Baba) is wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years.
The book is definitely about injustice, and there’s plenty of it. It was hard not to get angry and upset while reading this book. So much of what the Palestinians faced was unfair, to say the least, and the fact that it’s been going on for generations is truly mind-boggling. The landmines, the curfews, the blatant racism shown towards the Palestinians…, the list goes on.
However, this book doesn’t paint Israelis as inherently bad or Palestinians as inherently good. In my opinion, the author offers a very balanced opinion about the people involved in this conflict; she shows very clearly that there is good and bad in every race/ethnic group, a point that I feel is so important to remember. I think it’s also important to note that the writer is Jewish-American. I applaud her for writing a novel about a very controversial topic.
The story is about forgiveness and seeing the humanness in someone above seeing their religion or ethnicity. I did like the hopeful tone in the book despite the tragedies.
This is one of those books which are important to read in spite of the difficult subject matter. I don’t think I will ever forget this story.
The story follows the life of Palestinian Ichmad Hamad and his family over the span of half a century, living in a Palestinian village controlled by the Israeli army. Of his village Ichmad says, “Only five years earlier, it had been filled with olive trees. Now it was filled with landmines like the one that killed my baby sister, Amal.”
Ichmad is highly intelligent, and has Einstein as one of his role models. He sets about trying to use his intellect to keep his family afloat when his father (Baba) is wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years.
The book is definitely about injustice, and there’s plenty of it. It was hard not to get angry and upset while reading this book. So much of what the Palestinians faced was unfair, to say the least, and the fact that it’s been going on for generations is truly mind-boggling. The landmines, the curfews, the blatant racism shown towards the Palestinians…, the list goes on.
However, this book doesn’t paint Israelis as inherently bad or Palestinians as inherently good. In my opinion, the author offers a very balanced opinion about the people involved in this conflict; she shows very clearly that there is good and bad in every race/ethnic group, a point that I feel is so important to remember. I think it’s also important to note that the writer is Jewish-American. I applaud her for writing a novel about a very controversial topic.
The story is about forgiveness and seeing the humanness in someone above seeing their religion or ethnicity. I did like the hopeful tone in the book despite the tragedies.
This is one of those books which are important to read in spite of the difficult subject matter. I don’t think I will ever forget this story.
December 11, 2012
This book caught me by surprise. I was blown away! (literally blown away).....from the very beginning of the book!
Its a serious -sensitive -gripping novel ---(excellent engaging-storytelling).
*Ichmad Hamid*, the main character, (and voice), is incredible! We watch him age from age 12 to age 60. An astonishing journey. He is exposed to extreme ugliness in the world --and touches on 'beauty'. His personal gift is his 'mind' (gifted in math and science).
"The Almond Tree" is well written and genuinely an extraordinary achievement. It 'had' to take courage writing this book (from the Palestinian perspective), being born of the Jewish faith.
Its could be a challenging 'topic' for Jewish people to read. (as a Jew myself, I questioned my own 'tribal-thinking').
This book deepens our collective conversations about religion and reason ---about loyalty and even our geopolitical aims.
Michelle Corasanti handles the 'issues-at-hand' with compassion!
In the end: Its 'human' story. A very powerful story! (fast-page-turning-hard-to-put-down-type-of-book, also)
Its a serious -sensitive -gripping novel ---(excellent engaging-storytelling).
*Ichmad Hamid*, the main character, (and voice), is incredible! We watch him age from age 12 to age 60. An astonishing journey. He is exposed to extreme ugliness in the world --and touches on 'beauty'. His personal gift is his 'mind' (gifted in math and science).
"The Almond Tree" is well written and genuinely an extraordinary achievement. It 'had' to take courage writing this book (from the Palestinian perspective), being born of the Jewish faith.
Its could be a challenging 'topic' for Jewish people to read. (as a Jew myself, I questioned my own 'tribal-thinking').
This book deepens our collective conversations about religion and reason ---about loyalty and even our geopolitical aims.
Michelle Corasanti handles the 'issues-at-hand' with compassion!
In the end: Its 'human' story. A very powerful story! (fast-page-turning-hard-to-put-down-type-of-book, also)
July 27, 2015
A remarkable story about Ichmad, an impoverished child living in war torn Israel through the fighting between the Jews and Palestinians. A devastating view of war and how unarmed citizens are pulled in innocently striping them of loved ones, necessities and at times, even spirit. The story of Ichmad is of a 12 year old boy who was able to rise above and move beyond the barriers of poverty because of his genius mathematical skills. It cost him loved -ones including his own brother who believed him to be a traitor by working and studying with a Jew. It's also a story about faith and hope - about what peace can do to bring 2 fighting nations as well as fighting neighbours and family members together. I've read some harsh reviews about this book, but the reality is, it is a work of fiction. It was a story that kept me engaged and one I could go back and read again. 5 stars.
November 3, 2013
There is no doubt in my mind that Michelle Cohen Corasanti is one of today's greatest novelists, and most important socio-political commentators. What she's done with The Almond Tree is highlighted the cause of one of the world's most unjustifiably maligned, and oppressed people. She's also produced a beautiful multifaceted story which is in equal parts utterly riveting, shocking, and addictive. If you liked Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, you'll love this.
October 1, 2013
Heart wrenching and yet heartwarming novel that everyone should read.
May 4, 2014
WOW! What a powerful book and such an incredible story. This one got inside me right away, and held me to the very end. It's a riveting account of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict told mainly through the eyes of one family. The family's extremely different viewpoints all held points of validity. I can clearly see how "doing the right thing" can be so different for each person. How can anyone judge another's experience under such impossible circumstances. I wanted to say this is also a story of hope, but it is really one of luck. I can say this book opened my eyes in a profound way. I highly recommend it.
May 10, 2015
Wow! This work of fiction grabs you from the start with a heartbreaking bang in the devil's field and continues on as one engrossing page-turner of a read right to the very last page.
The suffering and painful losses (the gifted) Ichmad Hamid and his impoverished family endured during the never-ending conflict between the Israeli and Palestinians was hard to take, but at the same time, this unputdownable story filled the pages with family commitment and hope for a brighter future through education. Great characters.....Great (2012) debut!
July 27, 2013
I got a new friend. His name is Ichmad Hamid. Thank you Michelle Cohen Corasanti for writing a good story. I'm biggest fan of The Almond Tree.
Full rating novel..............
Full rating novel..............
July 28, 2018
Precioso. ❤️
February 5, 2013
This is a debut novel, so I wasn’t expecting that it would be a masterpiece, but it definitely needed a bit more polish.
It was an enjoyable read, and the topic is very pertinent. We are constantly faced with news about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost every day, so it was good to read about it. This is the story of a Palestinian boy, who is very intelligent and is caught in the middle of the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs. Through the course of the story, he is faced with the obligation to provide money for his family, or to keep his studies. Right here, we see a bit of a cliché, the martyr boy, who is poor and such a prodigy, and is faced with the difficult option of putting his family or himself first. Very common. I guess there’s enough of that already. Although, if the story brought something really new to it, it could be interesting, but it didn’t. It’s nice to see that the author did her research well enough, and that the historical references are right, at least, for all of the ones I checked were coincident with the factual dates.
This narrative goes from 1955 to 2009. 54 years described in little less than 350 pages. So, predictably, a lot of details go missing.
The book itself is very one-sided. It’s a shame that we only read the story from the perspective of Ichmad. There’s a fair amount of characters throughout the book, but we only know what Ichmad is thinking, we only have a glimpse from what Menachem, Abbas, or Baba, for example, think.
Also, choosing such a delicate issue, like the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, a conflict that has been active for decades, and that has made so many casualties, I was hoping that the book would center itself more on the characters than on the plot. The majority of the characters are very weak developed, and not very believable. They change their minds very quickly, and they’re not very coherent. Menachem, for example, is very hateful towards the Arabs at the beginning, but he turns out to change completely at the rest of the story.
Another thing that bothered me, was the way that Yasmine was portrayed when Ichmad first met her. Ichmad was supposed to be the good boy, very reasonable and intelligent, very eager to make peace, and as soon as he sees Yasmine, even though he as upset that he was getting to an arranged marriage, he was very harsh and judgmental towards Yasmine.
Maybe I’m being a bit picky about everything about the book, but I hope that this isn’t the only novel that the author will provide to the world. It was a nice premise, the plot, but I don’t think that Michelle already has the tools, in her writing, to make the narrative shine.
I won this book through GoodReads First Reads. It was the first book that I won around here, and I’m very happy that I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to receive this book and to review it.
It was an enjoyable read, and the topic is very pertinent. We are constantly faced with news about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost every day, so it was good to read about it. This is the story of a Palestinian boy, who is very intelligent and is caught in the middle of the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs. Through the course of the story, he is faced with the obligation to provide money for his family, or to keep his studies. Right here, we see a bit of a cliché, the martyr boy, who is poor and such a prodigy, and is faced with the difficult option of putting his family or himself first. Very common. I guess there’s enough of that already. Although, if the story brought something really new to it, it could be interesting, but it didn’t. It’s nice to see that the author did her research well enough, and that the historical references are right, at least, for all of the ones I checked were coincident with the factual dates.
This narrative goes from 1955 to 2009. 54 years described in little less than 350 pages. So, predictably, a lot of details go missing.
The book itself is very one-sided. It’s a shame that we only read the story from the perspective of Ichmad. There’s a fair amount of characters throughout the book, but we only know what Ichmad is thinking, we only have a glimpse from what Menachem, Abbas, or Baba, for example, think.
Also, choosing such a delicate issue, like the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, a conflict that has been active for decades, and that has made so many casualties, I was hoping that the book would center itself more on the characters than on the plot. The majority of the characters are very weak developed, and not very believable. They change their minds very quickly, and they’re not very coherent. Menachem, for example, is very hateful towards the Arabs at the beginning, but he turns out to change completely at the rest of the story.
Another thing that bothered me, was the way that Yasmine was portrayed when Ichmad first met her. Ichmad was supposed to be the good boy, very reasonable and intelligent, very eager to make peace, and as soon as he sees Yasmine, even though he as upset that he was getting to an arranged marriage, he was very harsh and judgmental towards Yasmine.
Maybe I’m being a bit picky about everything about the book, but I hope that this isn’t the only novel that the author will provide to the world. It was a nice premise, the plot, but I don’t think that Michelle already has the tools, in her writing, to make the narrative shine.
I won this book through GoodReads First Reads. It was the first book that I won around here, and I’m very happy that I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to receive this book and to review it.
February 4, 2013
The almond tree was an unexpected and inspiring novel about a history so complex and a war still raging today.
We meet Ichmad when he is 7. The story unfolds over a 50 year time period mixing history, fiction, tolerance, intolerance, shock and the choices that shape our lives and leaves us sometimes, sad, disappointed, hopeful and confused.
Told from a Palestinian view point the author build a wonderful story around probably one of the most controversial and uncomfortable topics in the world today. In this, allowing us to understand and experience the emotional burdens, scars and confusion of people on both sides of the borders.
Living in South Africa our political landscape might be different but I could draw so many similarities.
The book resonates with me in the same way Kite Runner & A thousand splendid suns had (two of my favourite books).
To me it does not matter what your political opinion is / are. What does matter is that this book touch you and makes you feel intense sadness, hope and inspiration to stay determined no matter what your circumstances.
The story became even more powerful once I discovered that Michelle Cohen Corasanti is a Jewish American telling a story about a Palestinian boy.
A wonderful read and I feel extremely humbled and blessed to have had the opportunity to receive this book as a Goodreads first read.
We meet Ichmad when he is 7. The story unfolds over a 50 year time period mixing history, fiction, tolerance, intolerance, shock and the choices that shape our lives and leaves us sometimes, sad, disappointed, hopeful and confused.
Told from a Palestinian view point the author build a wonderful story around probably one of the most controversial and uncomfortable topics in the world today. In this, allowing us to understand and experience the emotional burdens, scars and confusion of people on both sides of the borders.
Living in South Africa our political landscape might be different but I could draw so many similarities.
The book resonates with me in the same way Kite Runner & A thousand splendid suns had (two of my favourite books).
To me it does not matter what your political opinion is / are. What does matter is that this book touch you and makes you feel intense sadness, hope and inspiration to stay determined no matter what your circumstances.
The story became even more powerful once I discovered that Michelle Cohen Corasanti is a Jewish American telling a story about a Palestinian boy.
A wonderful read and I feel extremely humbled and blessed to have had the opportunity to receive this book as a Goodreads first read.
November 27, 2021
This book tells the story of Ichmad Hamid, and his life growing up in a rural Palestinian village in the Triangle area under Israeli control. When his father is imprisoned, he becomes the primary support for his mother and siblings. Through a series of fortunate events, Ichmad obtains a scholarship and studies science. He is initially scorned by his Israeli professor, but they ultimately become research partners. Ichmad’s brother, Abbas, is injured as a youth, and takes a different path, joining forces with the resistance, and viewing Ichmad’s actions as traitorous.
The overarching goal is to portray the difficulties for Palestinians living in this region. It is written by a Jewish woman who has lived in the area. This book encourages reconciliation and working together. It is about overcoming pre-conceived notions. It shows that getting to know a person as an individual can make a huge difference.
There are a few minor issues with the execution. The characters tend to change almost instantaneously rather than organically and gradually. The plot jumps from one major life event to another with little transition. But still, it is hard to be too critical of a book encourages peace in the Middle East. I read this book as a fictional companion to a non-fiction book that covers similar topics (The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan).
The overarching goal is to portray the difficulties for Palestinians living in this region. It is written by a Jewish woman who has lived in the area. This book encourages reconciliation and working together. It is about overcoming pre-conceived notions. It shows that getting to know a person as an individual can make a huge difference.
There are a few minor issues with the execution. The characters tend to change almost instantaneously rather than organically and gradually. The plot jumps from one major life event to another with little transition. But still, it is hard to be too critical of a book encourages peace in the Middle East. I read this book as a fictional companion to a non-fiction book that covers similar topics (The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan).
May 23, 2024
The Almond Tree was heartbreaking but also mind-expanding.
Within the first five pages, my heart broke for Ichmad's family's atrocities. The author, Michelle Cohen Corasanti, breathes life into the pages and her characters. I was already immersed in Ichmad and his family's lives from the start.
The desperation of the Palestinians amid turmoil was brutal to read but brought to vivid and depressing life on these pages. Ichmad was very gifted but could not escape the guilt he felt of ever having anything more in life than anyone he knew who was suffering. Amazingly, he was able to accomplish as much as he did with so much inner turmoil constantly eating away at him.
In short, this story has passions, hearts, and lives torn apart, but it is a story that needs to be told and has pages that need to be read.
5 stars
Within the first five pages, my heart broke for Ichmad's family's atrocities. The author, Michelle Cohen Corasanti, breathes life into the pages and her characters. I was already immersed in Ichmad and his family's lives from the start.
The desperation of the Palestinians amid turmoil was brutal to read but brought to vivid and depressing life on these pages. Ichmad was very gifted but could not escape the guilt he felt of ever having anything more in life than anyone he knew who was suffering. Amazingly, he was able to accomplish as much as he did with so much inner turmoil constantly eating away at him.
In short, this story has passions, hearts, and lives torn apart, but it is a story that needs to be told and has pages that need to be read.
5 stars
June 17, 2020
4.5 estrellas en realidad, porque necesita pulirse un poquito más su narrativa.
Peroooooo ¡que libro tan inspirador!
Trata sobre los conflictos que tiene que superar un niño palestino de 12 años y las elecciones que tuvo que hacer para salir adelante y sostener a su familia.
Me encanta el mensaje de empatía, amor , superación, las consecuencias del odio, del rencor y la división.
Es increíble lo desinformados que estamos sobre ciertas situaciones (En este caso el conflicto entre Israel y Palestina), muy idealista la perspectiva de la aurora pero tremendamente necesaria hoy día.
¡TODO EL MUNDO TENDRÍA QUE LEERLO!
Excelente debut de la escritora 👊🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Peroooooo ¡que libro tan inspirador!
Trata sobre los conflictos que tiene que superar un niño palestino de 12 años y las elecciones que tuvo que hacer para salir adelante y sostener a su familia.
Me encanta el mensaje de empatía, amor , superación, las consecuencias del odio, del rencor y la división.
Es increíble lo desinformados que estamos sobre ciertas situaciones (En este caso el conflicto entre Israel y Palestina), muy idealista la perspectiva de la aurora pero tremendamente necesaria hoy día.
¡TODO EL MUNDO TENDRÍA QUE LEERLO!
Excelente debut de la escritora 👊🏼👏🏼👏🏼
March 1, 2025
Novela que te llega directa al corazón, nos relata la situación palestino- israelí atraves de Ichmad un niño palestino que se ve abocado a mantener a su familia , pero eso no le impide alcanzar sus sueños.
Retrata bastante bien la situación en Oriente Próximo con mucha dosis de realidad y crudeza pero a la vez es un canto a la esperanza y la unidad de dos pueblos.
Retrata bastante bien la situación en Oriente Próximo con mucha dosis de realidad y crudeza pero a la vez es un canto a la esperanza y la unidad de dos pueblos.
January 20, 2022
La escritora Michelle Cohen Corasanti, es una judía estadounidense que durante su juventud, sus padres, decidieron mandarla una temporada a Israel allí por los años 80. Michelle, ajena completamente a todo lo que pasaba en el mundo, descubrió la realidad de lo que estaba pasando entre Israel y Palestina.
Tras su regreso a EEUU, decidió estudiar Estudios de Oriente Medio, pero no fue tras 30 años después cuando finalmente decidió escribir un libro ubicado a partir del año 1949 en la que el protagonista fuera un joven Palestino de 12 años.
El joven protagonista de la novela se llama Ichmad, es el hijo mayor de una familia palestina que viven una aldea que está bajo la ocupación Israelí. Una serie de circunstancias harán que Ichmad, un verdadero genio de la ciencia, se vea obligado a convertirse en el cabeza de familia, y dejar de lado todos sus sueños.
Es una historia tan dura como bonita. Es una historia de superación y de no rendirse a pesar de todas las adversidades que se nos pongan por delante. Es una historia donde nada es imposible si se trabaja duro para cumplir nuestros deseos.
Pero sobre todo, y es el mensaje que quiere transmitir la escritora, es una historia de búsqueda de la paz, de dejar de lado lo diferente y poner delante lo que nos hace iguales a todos.
Me ha encantado como está escrita, la evolución de cada personaje demostrando como las circunstancias de vida de cada uno, van moldeando nuestro ser para convertirnos en lo que somos.
Para comenzar esta lectura tienes que estar preparado para sentir un sinfín de montañas rusas emocionales porque Michelle, te va a hacer con esta historia reir, llorar, saltar, gritar…
Ha sabido plasmar además a la perfección las diferentes culturas que forman parte de este libro.
Libro muy recomendado.
Tras su regreso a EEUU, decidió estudiar Estudios de Oriente Medio, pero no fue tras 30 años después cuando finalmente decidió escribir un libro ubicado a partir del año 1949 en la que el protagonista fuera un joven Palestino de 12 años.
El joven protagonista de la novela se llama Ichmad, es el hijo mayor de una familia palestina que viven una aldea que está bajo la ocupación Israelí. Una serie de circunstancias harán que Ichmad, un verdadero genio de la ciencia, se vea obligado a convertirse en el cabeza de familia, y dejar de lado todos sus sueños.
Es una historia tan dura como bonita. Es una historia de superación y de no rendirse a pesar de todas las adversidades que se nos pongan por delante. Es una historia donde nada es imposible si se trabaja duro para cumplir nuestros deseos.
Pero sobre todo, y es el mensaje que quiere transmitir la escritora, es una historia de búsqueda de la paz, de dejar de lado lo diferente y poner delante lo que nos hace iguales a todos.
Me ha encantado como está escrita, la evolución de cada personaje demostrando como las circunstancias de vida de cada uno, van moldeando nuestro ser para convertirnos en lo que somos.
Para comenzar esta lectura tienes que estar preparado para sentir un sinfín de montañas rusas emocionales porque Michelle, te va a hacer con esta historia reir, llorar, saltar, gritar…
Ha sabido plasmar además a la perfección las diferentes culturas que forman parte de este libro.
Libro muy recomendado.
December 9, 2012
Without doubt this Israeli author has written a searing indictment against the Israeli's treatment of the Palestinians. I am not going to comment on the politics but just comment on the story told. It is very well written, well researched, parts are very difficult to read as our many when atrocities and war take over civilians lives. Regular people just hoping to lead normal lives, with enough money for food and shelter in which to take care of their families. This book opens with a heart-wrenching death, an imprisonment and two brothers who must grow up much faster than normal. At twelve and fourteen they are forced by circumstances to go to work for the very people that are causing them all this harm. One brother though is a genius in science and math and he believes this is the way out, and eventually a way to better his family. His other brother, has a hear full of hate for the enemy and this is the path he follows, disappearing from the family for many years. For fifty years this novel follows these brothers, and their families showing two opposite ways to deal with hate. One becomes a radical and the other follows the path of forgiveness and education. This is a very good first novel, but there are times I questioned things, could one brother really be so forgiving, especially with the many horrible things that keep happening to him and those he loves. I think I could understand the other brother and his hate better, though I like to think I would not go to the extremes he did. Would like to read more on this subject and have gotten some wonderful referrals from my goodread friends.
May 23, 2013
The Almond Tree is more than a beautiful compelling story. It is also very sad. Imagine the outcry if a 3 year old Canadian girl died because she chased a butterfly into a field next to her home. And unknown to her had entered a mine field, deliberately put there to kill whoever entered it.
This is the story of a Palestinian family whose only crime was to live on a farm Israeli settlers wanted.
The family, forced into a hovel and then a tent is pushed to the brink of extinction. The two oldest sons seek ways to save their family and their people. One confronts and returns the hatred and violence directed at him and his people. The other son, a gifted mathematician is provided with an education. Highly prized for his intelligence he is able to escape the horrors his family must continue living with. He has to work with a Jewish professor, who despises and fears him. This difficult and frightening relationship leads eventually to an understanding that hatred and violence only make things worse. The two become friends.
Both brothers act out of love for their family and for their people and yet both are powerless to change things.
In reading The Almond Tree, and others such as, "Stillpoint" by Colin Mallard, we are able to see the extent to which propaganda has blinded us to what is happening in Israel.
The United States and Canada have provided physical and moral support for the Israeli government and Israelis in general. In doing so they and their people have turned a blind eye to a great injustice on the scale of the holocaust: the slow steady destruction of the Palestinian people.
No wonder we are the target of hated caused by the clash of fundamental Islam with fundamental Christianity, and fundamental Judaism
We live in a democracy and when enough people become aware of what is happening it can be halted before it’s too late. If we want a world that is fair and safe for us we must ensure it is fair and safe for everyone.
This is the story of a Palestinian family whose only crime was to live on a farm Israeli settlers wanted.
The family, forced into a hovel and then a tent is pushed to the brink of extinction. The two oldest sons seek ways to save their family and their people. One confronts and returns the hatred and violence directed at him and his people. The other son, a gifted mathematician is provided with an education. Highly prized for his intelligence he is able to escape the horrors his family must continue living with. He has to work with a Jewish professor, who despises and fears him. This difficult and frightening relationship leads eventually to an understanding that hatred and violence only make things worse. The two become friends.
Both brothers act out of love for their family and for their people and yet both are powerless to change things.
In reading The Almond Tree, and others such as, "Stillpoint" by Colin Mallard, we are able to see the extent to which propaganda has blinded us to what is happening in Israel.
The United States and Canada have provided physical and moral support for the Israeli government and Israelis in general. In doing so they and their people have turned a blind eye to a great injustice on the scale of the holocaust: the slow steady destruction of the Palestinian people.
No wonder we are the target of hated caused by the clash of fundamental Islam with fundamental Christianity, and fundamental Judaism
We live in a democracy and when enough people become aware of what is happening it can be halted before it’s too late. If we want a world that is fair and safe for us we must ensure it is fair and safe for everyone.
December 21, 2012
This is one of the most well-written books that I have ever read. This book is amazingly relevent in a time of heightened tension between the Israelis and Palestinians. This book reminds you of the perspective of the Palestinians, which is a perspective often forgotten by the Western World. I recommend this book to anyone. Thanks FirstReads!
August 3, 2012
The Almond Tree by Michelle Cohen Corasanti
Garnet Publishing
ISBN 978-1-85964-329-7
Published: September 2012
Reading Michelle Cohen Corasanti’s first novel one is immediately conscious that this is must surely be non-fiction. The details are so personal, so harrowing, yet so full of hope and triumph over evil, you desperately want it to be real.The clues are in the writer’s history. A former lawyer, trained in international human rights law, someone who has lived seven years in Israel and heard the terrible stories of the continuous oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel that informs this novel. That and she, like Nora in the novel, had a traditional village wedding to an Arab-Israeli – someone who got out of the ruins with the aid of his remarkable intelligence. So this then is his story.
The Almond Tree is harrowing. Corasanti does not need to embellish. The encirclement of the Palestinian people, the removal off their own properties, the chain wire fences they put around ‘their’ orange trees as they took all the best land and impoverished a whole nation is well documented. The masters who invented apartheid in South Africa did the same. Deprive people of a means to a living, impoverish them spiritually – deny them rights, education, nourishment and then point at them as say ‘See – they live like animals’. Just last week Mitt Romney fell for it and pointed out the ‘Cultural’ superiority of Israel by comparison to the Palestinians. As if he hasn’t noticed how all the best land was stolen, the long concrete wall that strangles and divides them, the continued illegal occupation and buildings.
Corasanti takes us back to 1955 and it begins with a child, Amal, being blown up by a landmine just outside their own orchard. Because of curfew they can’t even bury the little girl that night.
A day later the Israelis descend, ring fence with wire the family home that had been theirs for centuries and give them thirty minutes to get off the land. They are dumped by a mud hut smaller than their chicken hut with an almond tree in the tiny backyard. This is the beginning of hell on earth for Ichmad Hamid, his brother Abbas their father Baba, their mother and assorted brothers and sisters. From the top of the Almond Tree with a toy telescope they can see their former home be occupied – watch as the settlers put in swimming pools that takes water from villagers, as they grow ever poorer.
But this is a story with hope, for Ichmad is a maths genius. His father knows it and so does the schoolmaster, but what possible future could there be for a boy living in a mud hut. Fate steps in when the former occupant of the mud hut (now resistance fighter) arrives late one night and forces Ichmad to help him bury weapons under the Almond tree. Ichmad is sworn to secrecy. The terrible consequences come the very next day when the Israeli soldiers arived kicking and pointing their guns. They know there are weapons here. They arrest Baba, their pacifist father, bulldoze the mud hut and Ichmad and his brother Abbas end up having to work on a construction site, building homes for Israeli’s on ‘their’ land.
Now the whole family live in adamp tent in total squalor, only the two brothers bringing in a small amount of money. Worse is still to come. An Iraqi takes a dislike to them on the building site and eventually pushes Abbas of a ledge and he falls hard breaking his back in two places.
This story is harrowing, the deprivation terrible. Their father is given a fourteen-year sentence – even though totally innocent. Brother Abbas lives, but is crippled for life, his anger growing all the time against the Israelis. Even though their father is imprisoned in the harsh Dror Detention Centre in the hot Negev Desert, he never advocates anger. He advises Ichmad to survive, continue his studies (even though he is now working in the slaughterhouse behind the house).
The chance for change comes when his schoolmaster (who hasn’t given up on Ichmad) encourages him to apply for a scholarship to a Hebrew University. His mother doesn’t want him to go near the Jews, his brother promises never to speak to him if he goes, but Baba advises him from prison to go for it. He knows that success in education is the only way out of their poverty.
Ichmad wins the scholarship and now he will be schooled by the enemy. His brother will never forgive him. At the University he makes friends but is also a victim of prejudice that nearly costs him place there. He lives an impoverished existence there – sending all his bursary money to his family to keep them going.
How Ichmad overcomes all the odds to success is the heart of the story. But tragedy never leaves his side. When he marries a Jewish girl – his brother is driven to join the underground terror groups. Every time he succeeds at something, something else is taken away and all the time Israel is making life for the Palestinians yet more harsh.
I reminded in this story of the film ‘Europa Europa’ directed by Agnieszka Holland. It concerns a true story of a boy growing up in Nazi Germany who separated from his family joins the Hitler Youth, all the while concealing his Jewish identity. He too had remarkable turns of luck and tragedies ending up on the Russian side…
The Almond Tree is a novel that should be required reading in Israel. It is sobering. Perhaps too fantastic for some – too optimistic – but it is built on a foundation of truth and the harsh oppression of Palestinians can never be denied. That there are people there who turn the other cheek, call for tolerance and peace is remarkable given their history since 1948. Right now we see the same words used by the dictator Assad against his own people – calling anyone who opposes him terrorists and outsiders - demonising those who call for democracy and freedom. The Almond Tree, intelligent, never over stated and written with love, informs and educates – it reminds us that their could be a better way to share this land and that if you allow intellect to blossom only good will come from it.
© Sam Hawksmoor August 2012
Author The Repossession and The Hunting (Hodder Childrens 2012)
Garnet Publishing
ISBN 978-1-85964-329-7
Published: September 2012
Reading Michelle Cohen Corasanti’s first novel one is immediately conscious that this is must surely be non-fiction. The details are so personal, so harrowing, yet so full of hope and triumph over evil, you desperately want it to be real.The clues are in the writer’s history. A former lawyer, trained in international human rights law, someone who has lived seven years in Israel and heard the terrible stories of the continuous oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel that informs this novel. That and she, like Nora in the novel, had a traditional village wedding to an Arab-Israeli – someone who got out of the ruins with the aid of his remarkable intelligence. So this then is his story.
The Almond Tree is harrowing. Corasanti does not need to embellish. The encirclement of the Palestinian people, the removal off their own properties, the chain wire fences they put around ‘their’ orange trees as they took all the best land and impoverished a whole nation is well documented. The masters who invented apartheid in South Africa did the same. Deprive people of a means to a living, impoverish them spiritually – deny them rights, education, nourishment and then point at them as say ‘See – they live like animals’. Just last week Mitt Romney fell for it and pointed out the ‘Cultural’ superiority of Israel by comparison to the Palestinians. As if he hasn’t noticed how all the best land was stolen, the long concrete wall that strangles and divides them, the continued illegal occupation and buildings.
Corasanti takes us back to 1955 and it begins with a child, Amal, being blown up by a landmine just outside their own orchard. Because of curfew they can’t even bury the little girl that night.
A day later the Israelis descend, ring fence with wire the family home that had been theirs for centuries and give them thirty minutes to get off the land. They are dumped by a mud hut smaller than their chicken hut with an almond tree in the tiny backyard. This is the beginning of hell on earth for Ichmad Hamid, his brother Abbas their father Baba, their mother and assorted brothers and sisters. From the top of the Almond Tree with a toy telescope they can see their former home be occupied – watch as the settlers put in swimming pools that takes water from villagers, as they grow ever poorer.
But this is a story with hope, for Ichmad is a maths genius. His father knows it and so does the schoolmaster, but what possible future could there be for a boy living in a mud hut. Fate steps in when the former occupant of the mud hut (now resistance fighter) arrives late one night and forces Ichmad to help him bury weapons under the Almond tree. Ichmad is sworn to secrecy. The terrible consequences come the very next day when the Israeli soldiers arived kicking and pointing their guns. They know there are weapons here. They arrest Baba, their pacifist father, bulldoze the mud hut and Ichmad and his brother Abbas end up having to work on a construction site, building homes for Israeli’s on ‘their’ land.
Now the whole family live in adamp tent in total squalor, only the two brothers bringing in a small amount of money. Worse is still to come. An Iraqi takes a dislike to them on the building site and eventually pushes Abbas of a ledge and he falls hard breaking his back in two places.
This story is harrowing, the deprivation terrible. Their father is given a fourteen-year sentence – even though totally innocent. Brother Abbas lives, but is crippled for life, his anger growing all the time against the Israelis. Even though their father is imprisoned in the harsh Dror Detention Centre in the hot Negev Desert, he never advocates anger. He advises Ichmad to survive, continue his studies (even though he is now working in the slaughterhouse behind the house).
The chance for change comes when his schoolmaster (who hasn’t given up on Ichmad) encourages him to apply for a scholarship to a Hebrew University. His mother doesn’t want him to go near the Jews, his brother promises never to speak to him if he goes, but Baba advises him from prison to go for it. He knows that success in education is the only way out of their poverty.
Ichmad wins the scholarship and now he will be schooled by the enemy. His brother will never forgive him. At the University he makes friends but is also a victim of prejudice that nearly costs him place there. He lives an impoverished existence there – sending all his bursary money to his family to keep them going.
How Ichmad overcomes all the odds to success is the heart of the story. But tragedy never leaves his side. When he marries a Jewish girl – his brother is driven to join the underground terror groups. Every time he succeeds at something, something else is taken away and all the time Israel is making life for the Palestinians yet more harsh.
I reminded in this story of the film ‘Europa Europa’ directed by Agnieszka Holland. It concerns a true story of a boy growing up in Nazi Germany who separated from his family joins the Hitler Youth, all the while concealing his Jewish identity. He too had remarkable turns of luck and tragedies ending up on the Russian side…
The Almond Tree is a novel that should be required reading in Israel. It is sobering. Perhaps too fantastic for some – too optimistic – but it is built on a foundation of truth and the harsh oppression of Palestinians can never be denied. That there are people there who turn the other cheek, call for tolerance and peace is remarkable given their history since 1948. Right now we see the same words used by the dictator Assad against his own people – calling anyone who opposes him terrorists and outsiders - demonising those who call for democracy and freedom. The Almond Tree, intelligent, never over stated and written with love, informs and educates – it reminds us that their could be a better way to share this land and that if you allow intellect to blossom only good will come from it.
© Sam Hawksmoor August 2012
Author The Repossession and The Hunting (Hodder Childrens 2012)
August 4, 2013
This book was so engaging that I couldn't stop reading long enough to change my status from 'to-read' to 'currently reading'. When I entered to win this book on Goodreads First Reads I thought it would be an average "ok" read but how wrong was I! I learnt so much from this book about life in Israel and to be honest it was extremely shocking. Of course I know there is depravity in many parts of the world including Israel but I just didn't realise the extent of the conflict and hatred between the Jews and the Arabs.
For me, Michelle Cohen Corasanti couldn't have written this book any better. She has a way of writing which really captured the rawness of life and of course the many many deaths in this book. I often thought that things couldn't get worse but they did. I thought that people's opinions would change but they didn't. For me this made the novel all the more real and heart wrenching. Bravely too, Corasanti didn't shy away from including graphic detail of the deaths and the gore which many people endured day by day and I am all the more grateful for this as it made for a fantastic read.
For anyone who wants to know how war affects people or someone who just wants a page turner this is the book for you.
For me, Michelle Cohen Corasanti couldn't have written this book any better. She has a way of writing which really captured the rawness of life and of course the many many deaths in this book. I often thought that things couldn't get worse but they did. I thought that people's opinions would change but they didn't. For me this made the novel all the more real and heart wrenching. Bravely too, Corasanti didn't shy away from including graphic detail of the deaths and the gore which many people endured day by day and I am all the more grateful for this as it made for a fantastic read.
For anyone who wants to know how war affects people or someone who just wants a page turner this is the book for you.
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