The Man Who Fell Into a Puddle: Israeli Lives

If you are looking for straightforward polemic, or boiled-down geopolitical bromides, Igal Sarna has nothing to offer you. But if you are moved by elegant, minimalist tales of real people caught up in devastating currents of history and conflict, this is a great book. I gave it a rave review in the San Francisco Chronicle when it came out. There is a kind of music in the sadness of these stories. It's a mournful, fraught... Read Full Review

Igal Sarna's new book of 'Israeli Lives,' recently published in a superb English translation by Haim Watzman, who also translated Tom Segev's 'One Palestine, Complete,' is a collection of fourteen heart-stopping stories of seemingly very ordinary people who, for different reasons and in different circumstances, found themselves in very extraordinary situations. Sarna is one of a small number of journalists - he writes for... Read Full Review

This collection of non-fiction stories is an important contribution to understand the complex history of Israel and Palestine. It shows the conflict on the level of individuals and individual suffering. Igal Sarna has a genuine sense do discover, to investigate and to narrate the drama of individual life determined by the building process of two nations. Despite the hard and hopeless reality he finds words of a poetic quality... Read Full Review