ISBN: 0-88739-255-5
272 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Pub Date: 10/2000
Paperback Original
Price: $15.95
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Pilgrims'
Daniel Gavron
Pilgrims Hotel in Jerusalem's old quarter is the key setting of this dramatic novel by Daniel Gavron. By skillfully using multiple points of view, Gavron makes Palestine's history movingly personal, interweaving the lives of three families with the tragic and tumultuous twentieth century life of the city and land they claim as their home.
The Howards, who are devout Christians, start the hotel after World War I, when the British Mandate Government assumes control of Palestine. Their Sephardi Jewish friends, the Pardos, though buffeted by economic misfortune, struggle through wrenching loss to maintain their ties to the Holy Land. The Najjar family, devout Muslims and long-established Palestinian merchants, is finally torn apart by the hostilities between Jews and Arabs. Sumptuous feast, violent clashes, betrayal, murder, and tragic loss mark the unfolding of the entwined lives of these three families-pushed and pulled, first one way then the other, by the fateful movement toward the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
In the middle of it all is Pilgrims' Hotel, an island of hope, a place where contending Jews and Arabs can trade words instead of bullets.
Review: "Gavron's novel dramatizes a personal view of the conflict in Palestine, starting at the beginning of the twentieth century and continuing up to the present day. Sympathetic to all sides of the ongoing conflict and hopeful for the future, Gavron gives readers a glimpse into how the religious struggles in Palestine have shaped the lives of all who have lived there, regardless of faith or nationality."
-Booklist
Bio: DANIEL GAVRON is a writer and journalist. Some of his previous writings include Walking Through Israel, the story of his own experience walking Israel, and Israel After Begin, a political-social look at Israel in the aftermath of the Lebanon War. He lives in Motza Elite, Israel, with his wife, and has three grown-up children.
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