The Book Thief

Tags

book-review, books, fiction, reading

It is not easy to get into this book by Markus Zusak, though once the reader overcomes the initial difficulty posed by its peculiar layout and can accept the premise that the narrator is Death itself, with its own inimitable view of the physical and human world, it is possible to become engrossed in the narrative.

One of the first sentences, set out quite starkly, reads ‘HERE IS A SMALL FACT. You are going to die.

It would be difficult to find a more startling way to start a book, and this certainly had its effect on me, making me stop and think before reading on. And so, after accepting the basic premise that the book is written from the viewpoint of Death, who turns out to be an individual with ideas, emotions and principles, we are told about a train journey somewhere in Germany on a cold winter’s day. We learn, after a few leaps backwards and forwards in time, that the period is that of Hitler, the Fuhrer, and that a girl is on the way with her mother and young brother to be delivered to foster parents. The brother dies during the journey, and the girl is left, unwilling and alone, with the foster parents.

The saga of the girl’s time on the inappropriately-called Himmel Street in the small town of Mulching, somewhere near Munich, occupies the bulk of the book. We read of her reluctance to remain with her foster parents, of her tendency to steal any book that comes her way, despite the fact that she cannot read, and her nightly battle with the urine-soaked sheets in her bed.

It is at this point that her foster-father, Hans Hubermann, comes to her aid, helping her to change the sheets, distracting her from her misery by playing the accordion, teaching her to read and generally serving as a soothing and supporting influence, offsetting his rather abrasive wife, Rosa. The girl, Liesel, is sent to the local school, where she learns to fight the children of the neighbourhood as well as to make friends with some of them, especially a tow-headed neighbour called Rudy.

The events in the book take place during the years that Germany is at war, and the people described in it are ordinary Germans, doing their best to eke out a living and put food on the table for their families. The youngsters are required to attend Hitler Youth events, but soon tire of the discipline and sadism of their superiors, preferring to spend their time engaging in expeditions to local farms and orchards to steal potatoes and apples.

The humdrum life of the Hubermann family is interrupted by the arrival of Max, a Jewish man trying to evade capture by the authorities whose father served with Hans in the First World War. The family gives him shelter in their basement, despite knowing that the penalty for helping a Jew is death. Liesel develops a strong bond with Max, who shares her fascination with writing and reading, and even writes her a little story. Liesel discovers the mayor’s fine library, and makes a habit of stealing books from there, aided and abetted by Rudy.

The bombing of the city by the Allies creates a situation whereby basements of individual houses are used as communal bomb shelters, and this forces Max to leave the Hubermann family. Equipped with a suitcase full of food he sets off into the unknown, and his fate is very much in Liesels’s mind in the following weeks and months.

The sight of groups of weak and starving Jews being forcibly marched through the town on their way to or from the nearby Dachau concentration camp haunts Liesel and her father. Hans tries to give some bread to one of them and is cruelly whipped by the soldiers in return. Eventually Hans is called up for military service, despite being well beyond conscription age, and returns home wounded. He continues to work for the army at a desk job in town.

The final chapter reveals the deaths of almost all the residents of Himmel Street in a sueprise Allied bombing raid. Only Liesel is left alive as she has been sitting in their basement reading. Death describes the scene in poetic terms, and the reader is left with a sense of desolation given the amount of death and destruction that has been inflicted on innocent human beings.

In an interesting supplement, the author provides some aspects of his writing process. But for me the overriding impression after reading this book was that it is an admirable – and fairly successful – attempt to show that ordinary German people were not to blame for Hitler’s bloodthirsty excesses, and that they did their best to retain their humanity under the most trying conditions.

An Unexpected Blow

Tags

Israel, Palestine, politics, zionism

An Unexpected Blow

It is not pleasant to wake up and learn that Britain and other European countries are imposing sanctions (as yet unspecified) on so-called ‘illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank.’ I’m no expert in international law, but to call the region in the west of Israel the ‘occupied West Bank’ is insulting and misleading.

That region was incorporated into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after the British Mandate came to an end in 1948 and the Arab countries surrounding the newly-established State of Israel all sent their armies to destroy it. That plan failed and Israel affirned its existence by repelling the attackers and even expanding the territory granted to it under the terms of the UN Resolutio signaling the end of hostilities. Jordan did not fully assimilate that part of the country, calling it ‘the West Bank,; i.e., of the River Jordan,  and refusing to grant its occupants Jordanian citizenship, preferring to label them ‘refugees’ and preserve that status for them for all eternity. The refugees were granted special humanitarian aid by the UN, and for that purpose UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) was set up. Every vestige of previous Jewish life in the area was expunged, leaving the region ‘Judenrein.’

When Jordan conspired with Egypt and Syria to attack Israel in 1967 their subsequent defeat meant that inter alia all the territory known as the West Bank came under Israel’s control. Initially, opinions in Israel were divided as to what should be done with it, but eventually radical elements in favour of Jewish settlement of the area prevailed, giving the government no choice but to accept that policy. Initially, this involved the return of Jewish settlers to sites that had previously been Jewish, such as Hebron and the Etzion Bloc, but later governments agreed to widen the area permitted to be settled by Jews, though keeping extensive areas reserved for the indigenous population.

Throughout human history wars have been fought over territory, with the ultimate conclusion being determined by who controls what. In my own lifetime parts of Germany have been ceded to Poland and France as a result of wartime gains, and the borders of several countries in Eastern Europe have changed in accordance with military conquest. Nobody seems to be particularly perturbed by this, not to mention the occupation by Turkey of a large part of Cyprus in 1974 under a similar arrangement.Where are all the demonstrators clamouring for the return of Cyprus to its previous Greek status?

It seems to me that there are forces at work behind the scenes inciting sympathy for the former residents of Palestine, most of whom could easily have been absorbed by any of the many Arab countries in the region, just as the newly-established state of Israel absorbed the many thousands of Jewish refugees expelled by Moslem countries where they had lived for generations. The murderous attempt invade Israel by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in October 2023 has served as a warning signal to all Israelis not to trust the idea of a Palestinian state. The vast financial resources of Qatar and other Arab countries have been invested in fomenting dissent among the well-intentioned populace of Western Europe directed against Israel and its policies. I’m no supporter of Israel’s current right-wing government, but I hope it will refuse to be intimidated by threats of sanctions and will continue to pursue a policy of maintaining law and order. There are ways and means of attaining that end, and it is possible that more could and should be done to that end, but whether the imposition of sanctions by outside elements is the best way of achieving it is questionable. My hope is that the upcoming national election will bring into power a government with a firmer grasp of the limits of its power, and as a resident of Israel I will do my best to see that this happens.

A Month in the Country

Tags

adventure, hiking

Spending time away from home gives one a chance to take a longer view of our everyday life, and no view could be longer, or further away from our routine in Israel, than spending time in a remote French village.

The place is set in countryside that was once verdant but now, as a result of the recent spells of unaccustomed heat, consists of dried-up fields with boundaries denoted by wilting bushes and the occasional tree. Nonetheless, the village is still a place of tranquility and solace for the anguished souls who normally inhabit a country which is anything but tranquil.

Many of the ancient stone houses stand empty during much of the year, being occupied in the summer months by owners or rental tenants. The sedate pace of life usually dictated by the weather and the seasons seems to impose a general spirit of friendliness among the local inhabitants. It is impossible to pass another person in the street without being greeted by a friendly ‘Bonjour’ to which it is imperative to respond with a similar greeting. The people involved may never have met you, but common courtesy in the countryside seems to require at least the friendly acknowledgement of one another’s existence. In moments of need the villagers do not hesitate to come to one another’s aid, — no overtones of the animosity described in Marcel Pagnol’s novel ‘Jean de Florette,’ which was made into a heart-rending movie directed by Claude Berri.

Getting away from our daily routine in Israel also means being cut off from the Israeli media. This is an undoubted benefit, especially in an election year, with the heightened intent of politicians and commentators on getting their message across. It may be something of a betrayal of our democratic responsibility to pay attention to all the policies and messages, but the intensity of the political fray has come to be burdensome, and one simply turns away from the constant barrage of opinions and ideas, not to mention the attacks, both physical and metaphorical, of one segment on another.

So while we’re in the village we spend our time reading, listening to music, going for walks, making little forays to local places of interest or doing our shopping (the nearest place with shops is over ten kilometers away, so having a car is essential). The countryside is replete with picturesque villages, beautiful scenery, ancient churches and historic castles, so there is no shortage of places of interest to visit. In addition, local municipalities provide sites for art exhibitions and even organize concerts of various kinds. And of course there are the restaurants and cafes. One of our favourite local restaurants offers a set three-course meal for a very reasonable price, though one can also choose one of the many alternatives on offer. This constitutes the traditional lunch provided for local workers at the rate which the employer is required to cover. It is not unusual to see a group of local workers, still in uniform, sitting at one of the tables, consuming their midday meal and washing it down with a bottle of wine. One wonders how much work is done afterwards, but that’s not our concern.

As we left the village after a month of peace and quiet, the rain was starting to fall, hinting at the rigours of the winter to follow. Winters in central France are harsh, with snow and ice, floods and freezing weather. The log fires that are used for heating require constant attention and involve a lot of work. Anyone who doesn’t have to stay in the countryside for work or their farm beats a hasty retreat as winter approaches, as we have done. Israel’s winter is usually less extreme, and if there is snow and ice it doesn’t last for very long.

Israel’s political climate can be stormy and distressing, but its physical climate is one of the best in the world, with its warm, sunny summers and temperate winters. In addition, Israel’s extensive desalination projects mean that the country doesn’t suffer from a shortage of water, as many of its neighbours do. All Israel needs to make life perfect is less animosity from those who seek to destroy it.

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Is This my Lost Home?

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family, germany, Hamburg, life, travel

In 1916 my father, Manfred Vanson (van Son) was born in Germany, in the port city of Hamburg. His great-grandfather had moved there in 1823 from Deventer in Holland where his family had lived for many generations. My father grew up in a cultured and musical family, surrounded by uncles, aunts and cousins.

When Hitler made life in Germany impossible for Jews, my father managed to find refuge in England in 1939. His fiancée, my mother Franziska Hirsch, joined him there, and in 1940 they were married. The story of my father’s escape from Germany after what was formerly called ‘Kristallnacht’ but is now known as the ’Reichspogrom,’ is etched in my memory as I heard it from him several times. At the time he was a young man of 23, living at home with his widowed mother. In the course of that day they received phone calls from relatives informing them of what was happening in the city and warning them to stay at home with the door locked. This my father duly did, and eventually heard the sound of boots on the staircase leading to the apartment where he and his mother lived. He could hear the S.S. men approach the door, then decide that the name v. Son was not a Jewish name, and they went away. The next day his mother, my grandmother, sent a telegram to her cousins in London, asking them to save her son.

My father left Germany, but had to leave his mother behind, hoping that he would manage to bring her over to England, but that turned out to be impossible. For the rest of his life my father lived with the sense of guilt and remorse at not having succeeded in rescuing his mother, who perished in Theresienstadt from malnutrition and neglect. After the war my father refused to set foot in Germany and declined every invitation from the authorities in Hamburg to visit it as a former resident of the city.

My two sisters and I were born in England and grew up there. We benefited from its education as well as from the national health system and the general atmosphere of ‘live and let live.’ Our family life as orthodox Jews seemed happy and normal to us, and we considered ourselves loyal subjects of British society. We received a good education, attended university, were avaricious readers of the books on offer at the local lending library, attended plays and concerts and acquired both Jewish and non-Jewish friends.

We may not have realised it at the time, but it was a privilege to grow up in London, even though our residence in a distant suburb meant that we had to endure long journeys by train and bus as well as on foot to get to school or work, as well as to go to the theatre or the main shopping area in town (Oxford Street).

After my father’s death in 2003 I began to receive an annual report from the official body representing the renewed Jewish community in Hamburg. In addition, my father had been involved in a project to publish the letters his mother had managed to smuggle out to him and his sister from Hamburg and the Theresienstadt camp, and this continued. This book was eventually published in 2005 in German by the Ministry for Political Education in Hamburg as ‘Aber Seid alle Beruhigt; Letters from Regina van Son to her Family, 1941-1942’, edited by Jurgen Sielemann,. For its publication the Hamburg municipality invited my sisters and myself to the city to be present at the official launch of the book.

To be present at that event meant overcoming whatever sense of reluctance I might have had in order to acknowledge the effort that had been made to bring the project to fruition even after my father’s death. We were made to feel welcome by the Hamburg municipality, and could enjoy our visit to the city where our father had once lived.

There is no denying the fact that Hamburg is a beautiful city, with fine buildings and plentiful greenery, as well as its lakes and canals. Its temperate climate is very similar to that of London, which also helped to make us feel at home there.

After long deliberations, this year my husband and I decided to accept the Hamburg municipality’s invitation extended to former residents and their children to visit the city and participate in the special visitors’ programme. And so, in June 2026, we flew to Hamburg and joined the group of individuals like ourselves who were descended from former citizens.

The group consisted of some thirty people, most of them no longer young, coming from various parts of the world. A few were also from Israel, but others were from the USA, Argentina, Brazil and Australia, indicating where people, usually grandparents, had managed to find refuge from Nazi Germany. The organisers of the programme had shown a great deal of care and consideration in planning the various activities, including formal and informal dinners, boat trips and tours of sites of interest to us as former members of Hamburg’s Jewish community. In my case this involved arranging for a wheelchair as my health situation deteriorated and I found participating in some activities too tiring. We were also informed that the group would be accompanied by armed guards as well as an incognito police presence throughout our visit.

I felt touched and privileged at being asked to give a short speech in English at the official dinner held at the imposing senate hall. I managed to say a few words in German, told the audience about my father’s experiences in Hamburg and my family’s life in England. I ended by saying that I felt very much at home in Hamburg.

It is true that I felt at home in Hamburg, and could share my father’s resentment at having had to leave the city which had been his home. Currently, the municipality and other authorities are involved in the project to rebuild the imposing Bornplatz synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis. Nevertheless, I certainly can’t complain at having lived in London, which also has many advantages. I sometimes wonder what would have become of me if I had been able to make my life in Hamburg, but that is mere idle speculation. I think that many of my father’s good qualities – tolerance, kindness, generosity, sense of humour – reflect something of his upbringing in pre-war Hamburg, and hope that something of that spirit continues in me. But, like my father in his day, though I still have fond feelings for my former home, my permanent home is here in Israel.

By the Rivers of Babylon…

Tags

Bible, faith, Israel

Attending a performance of Verdi’s opera Nabucco in Tel Aviv last month I was struck by the apparent reference to contemporary developments. The opera, which was written in 1841, is loosely based on events described in the Bible (2 Kings, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Daniel) recounting the conquest of the ancient Jewish capital, Jerusalem, and the kingdom of Judea by Nebuchadnezzer, king of Babylon, followed by the deportation of its Jewish population into slavery in Babylon. Alongside largely invented dramatic events in the opera which involve power struggles and love interest, the theme of the exile and enslavement of the Jewish population plays a major dramatic role.

Babylon was one of the most celebrated and influential cities of the ancient world. Located on the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq, it served as the capital of the Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian empires in the sixth and seventh centuries BCE.

The high point of the opera is the beautiful song of yearning for the homeland of Zion sung by the chorus of Hebrew slaves. At the time that the opera was first performed Italy was undergoing political upheaval and rebellion against foreign rule in the struggle for unification, known as the Risorgimento. The chorus of the Hebrew slaves in the opera served as one of the unifying points for the movement, and was sung by Italians as if it were the national anthem.

The words of the chorus (Va pansiero) speak of the longing for the lost land of Zion, with references to King Solomon, the river Jordan and the ancient prophets. Evidently, Italians transmuted that longing for the lovely, lost land of Judea into their longing for a unified Italy. Fair enough. Anyone’s longing for their country can be regarded as legitimate, provided it is in fact their country. But what comes across in the words and the music of the opera is the fact that the Jews were forcibly taken from their land and that they continually longed for it, until eventually they were allowed to return by King Cyrus of Persia in 538 BCE, after the Persian conquest of Babylon. It is described in the Bible in the books of Ezra and 2 Chronicles.

‘By the rivers of Babylon’ is the opening line of Psalm 137, apparently written by the exiled Jews. It is a deeply moving biblical hymn that describes the longing for their homeland, and constitutes a patent demonstration of the Jews’ deep-rooted connection to the Land of Israel already several millennia ago.

And yet, it seems that the Biblical texts are not sufficient proof of the Jews’ age-old connection to their land, and contemporary critics have the gall to claim that the Jews are upstarts in Israel, colonial occupiers of land that belongs to ‘the Palestinians.’ That term, which was imposed on the region in the first century CE, was devised by the conquering Romans and derived from their distortion of the long-gone occupants of part of the region known as the Philistines (and with whom Samson had several clashes until his final revengeful demise (Judges 14:3; 1 Samuel 13:19–20).

Be that as it may, the ability to disregard hard evidence and distort facts is characteristic of the concerted campaign to discredit modern-day Israel and the claim that the Jews have no right to the land which bears their name that we are witnessing today.

What I Learned in London in June 2026

Tags

Israel, London, Palestine, politics, zionism

I was born and brought up in London in the years immediately after WWII, and left in 1965, so memories of the place are inextricably bound up with the events of that period. I was never really part of the ‘Swinging Sixties,’ though I was aware of political and cultural developments since the daily consumption of newspapers was an important part of life as I was growing up. My awareness of world events was influenced by my family background and the rather limited fare offered on television and radio.

I have visited London from time to time since leaving to live abroad, and I am aware of some of the changes that have taken place there. I no longer visit Oxford Street with the same sense of nostalgia as I did in earlier days. Of course, there have been many changes there, shops have come and gone, those that remained have changed in one way or another, but the broad expanse of what used to be London’s main venue for buying clothes still endures. My most vivid memory is of the bi-annual excursion there with my mother and my two sisters to equip ourselves with suitable apparel for the imminent Jewish high holidays, where our attendance at synagogue required suitable attire. Our mother would do her best to find clothes that pleased us and did not place too much of a burden on the tight family budget – no easy task, I’m sure.

Over the years I’ve heard and read a great deal about demographic changes to the population of England, and of London in particular. Immigration has swelled the ranks of people who do not subscribe to the traditional British way of life, which involves celebrating the Christian festivals and respecting the general idea of ‘live and let live.’ Attacks on Jews have set alarm bells ringing in Jewish communities around England, and especially in London. Though from what I see in the media physical violence seems to be far more prevalent in England today than it was in the past.

So it was with some trepidation that I returned to my old stamping ground for a week last June. To my relief, I did not encounter any aggression or nastiness, though the fact that I’m Jewish and live in Israel was not readily apparent to the casual observer. Whenever my husband and I, now both of us in our eighties, got into an underground carriage people invariably gave up their seats to us. Walking down Oxford Street was not the unpleasant experience I had expected. It’s true, the population is more varied, but that does not make it aggressive or hostile. On the contrary, the word one hears most is ‘sorry,’ when one bumps into someone or treads on toes inadvertently.

The Jewish friends I spoke to about what I had understood to be rampant antisemitism in Britain did not seem to know what I was talking about, and usually switched the conversation to making disparaging remarks about Israel, and about Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. The propaganda campaign in favour of a Palestinian state seems to have succeeded to such an extent that even my Jewish friends – including those who once lived in Israel – assume that the establishment of such an entity is inevitable. Many Israelis no longer subscribe to that view, in view of what happened here on 7^th October 2023.

I declined when a young woman offered me a copy of the ‘Palestine Times’ in the street, stating my view that the idea of a Palestinian state was fictitious. The incensed young lady shouted at me that she refused to discuss the issue and that I should ‘move on.’ I duly did so, but told her that she should ‘shut up.’ Not a fruitful discussion, I agree, but that seems to be the mindset over there just now.

Nevertheless, my experience of London this time was that it is still as decent a place as ever, that life goes on more or less as usual as people go to the pub, watch football and enjoy the sun when it shines, provided it doesn’t turn into a heatwave.

Goebbels Rides Again

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gaza, Israel, Palestine, politics, zionism

The erstwhile Nazi propaganda minister must be rubbing his hands with glee down there in whichever circle of Hades he is now spending his time. The past-master at the art of producing and disseminating false information in order to discredit Jews while escalating enmity and loathing towards them has found talented successors in the contemporary world of communications. Using a succession of lies, falsehoods, distortions of the truth and blatant misrepresentations of reality, the Palestinian propaganda machine now represents Israel, the tiny Jewish country which has been under attack from the moment of its establishment, as an evil rogue state causing distress and unrest throughout the Middle East. Every lie and calumny has its roots in the inversion of truth and justice, just as Joseph Goebbels portrayed Germany’s loyal Jewish subjects as enemies of the state, turning reality on its head and deploying it against his unsuspecting victims. Here are just a few examples.

1. The genocide lie: When there is war there are also civilian casualties. Were no civilians killed when the Allies bombed Dresden in WWII? In Berlin? Hamburg? Oh sure, the targets were military, but no matter how accurate the bombers were, the cost to civilian life was not always avoidable. Hamas built tunnels in Gaza in order to cause harm to Israelis not to protect civilians. Huge quantities of weapons were located in schools and kindergartens, hospitals served as nerve-centers from which to launch military attacks, with no thought given to the need to protect whoever might be using the site for a medical purpose. Besides, the IDF is known for its efficacy, so that if genocide in Gaza had been its purpose it would surely have done a better job rather than allowing the population to double in size so that it now numbers two million.
2. The apartheid lie: Anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with the Apartheid system that existed in South Africa would know that people were classified according to skin colour, and that this served as the basis of all services and situations. Separate entrances to buildings for blacks and whites, separate bathrooms, separate seats on public transport, and so on. Anyone who visits Israel will see Arabs and Jews working side by side, using the same buildings, shops, hospitals and medical centres. In fact, many of Israel’s health services are manned (and womanned) by Arabs as well as by Jews. Arab citizens of Israel have equal rights, vote at elections and even have representatives in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Arab justices sit on the bench of all the levels of the judiciary, including the High Court. So all the talk of apartheid is just another inversion of the truth.
3. The Palestine lie: When the British Mandate ended in 1948, the area known as Palestine covered the entire Holy Land. Palestine was the Mandate’s term for the region, taken over from the term imposed by the Ancient Romans (who, by the way, crucified Jesus) when they exiled the Jews from their land back in the first century C.E. Anyone born in the area during the period of the British Mandate was defined as Palestinian on their birth certificate, and this includes my Jewish husband (born in Haifa in 1940). The Arabs were offered a state, but declined, preferring to attack the nascent Jewish state. They were defeated, but refused to recognize Israel’s existence and continued to launch attacks, including wars, from time to time, either singly or in concert (1956, 1967,1972, etc., etc.), the latest murderous onslaught took place on 7th October 2023. Israel reacted and repelled the invader, as it had every right to do. In the years since 1948, when Israel was founded, various attempts were made by well-meaning international politicians to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state, but whenever it came to the crunch, the Palestinians declined the offer, preferring to maintain a permanent state of hostility, thereby condemning the Arabs who had fled the country in 1948 to the status of permanent refugees, rather than rescuing them from their fate, as Israel did in 1948 with the waves of immigrants expelled from the Arab countries in which they had been living for many generations. The idea of Palestine is a fiction that the Arabs use to present themselves as victims, whereas in reality there are huge swathes of Arab-controlled territory where the ‘Palestinians’ could easily be settled.

As former US President Bill Clinton wrote after his failed attempt to persuade Yasser Arafat to accept a Palestinian state: ‘The Palestinians don’t want a state, they just want to kill Jews.’

The sad fact is that there was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. There were no Jews or Israelis there. There was self-determination. Truckloads of money were supplied by Qatar and other Arab countries. But instead of cultivating the productive capacity of its population, all that the self-governing state of Gaza could produce was a force bent on murder, rape, pillage and bestiality. One could say that it got its just desserts, but it still stands as an object-lesson in what happens when every humanitarian concept is abandoned. Thus, funded by Qatar and other Arab countries, the Palestinian propaganda machine continues to propagate lies, enabling gullible individuals to delude themselves into thinking that they are helping a humanitarian cause, when in actual fact they are aiding a cause that is anti-humanitarian and at odds with human decency.

The Pink Sari (le Sari Rose)

Tags

books, history, India, politics

Reading a book about India in French which has been translated from the Spanish original seems a bit crazy. However, when I picked this book up from the shelf in our local pensioners’ club I hadn’t realized what a long journey it had taken to get there. Neither was I aware of the extensive journey on which it would take me. As I read on in this700-page tome by Javier Moro, translated by Francois Rosso, I gained insights into the complex history and politics of contemporary India. I am not sorry that I made the effort, and have come away enriched in knowledge and understanding of the enormous effort involved in governing India, the largest democracy in the world. But it is as much a family saga as an account of political developments, and the pink sari of the title has both historical and personal significance in it.

The book begins at the moment Sonia Ghandi is informed of the assassination of her husband, Rajiv, prominent Indian politician and scion of the celebrated Ghandi family which has been inextricably bound up in the history of contemporary India. His grandfather, Jahawarlal Nehru, was a key figure in India’s struggle for independence and became its first president; his mother, Indira, Jahawarlal’s daughter, bore the banner of the family’s  political involvement, going on to lead the Congress party and eventually becoming Prime Minister; her sons, Sanjay and Rajiv, were also involved in Indian politics, and it is the saga of  that family and its contribution to Indian political life which constitutes the essence of the book. The pink sari of the title was made from the cotton cloth that Nehru wove while jailed by the British colonial power, and it was worn by both Indira and Sonia at their respective weddings.

After the reader has absorbed the situation in which Sonia suddenly finds herself, the book proceeds to describe her youth and background. She was born into a middle-class family in central Italy, studied languages and went to a language school in Cambridge, England to improve her English. While there, she met Rajiv Ghandi, who was studying at the university, and the two fell in love. Their courtship had to overcome many obstacles, not least the objection of Sonia’s family to her relationship with the young Indian. But the two young people would not be deterred, and were eventually married in India. In accordance with Indian custom, Sonia moved into her busband’s family home, which in this case was the home of the country’s Prime Minister, Indira Ghandi. Relations between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law can often be fraught, but those two intelligent women managed to forge a firm bond between them, and the account of Sonia’s acceptance into the household and ability to adapt to the situation provides an insight into their respective characters.

The ups and downs of Indira’s career and the account of her commitment to India’s democracy and the Congress party that was founded by her father form a large part of the book. Her life story provides a thorough grounding in contemporary Indian history and politics and an understanding of the characters involved. During Indira’s term as prime minister her son, Sanjay, was instrumental in introducing the sterilization policy aimed at reducing India’s birth rate, thereby arousing considerable resentment. At the time there were also violent clashes between Muslims and Hindus, with disputes over worship and territory. After Sanjay’s death in a plane accident, pressure was put on Rajiv to enter politics and support their mother. This he did so only reluctantly, knowing that this would mean forgoing his previously tranquil way of life as a working pilot and the ability to enjoy family life.

Rajiv’s death in a suicide terrorist attack left Sonia and their two children bereft. Pressure was then put on Sonia by members of the Congress party to enter politics, irrespective of the fact that she was still regarded as a foreigner. Sonia eventually acceded, feeling the burden of responsibility embodied in the family name she bore. After being made head of the Congress party and gaining a seat in parliament she worked tirelessly to eradicate corruption throughout the country and maintain a policy of laicity and equality before the law. The book ends with an account of the situation in India today, with Sonia remaining a popular figure there even after her retirement from politics.

Books and Stuff

Tags

book-review, book-reviews, books, fiction, reading

Last week, having missed the bus from Tel Aviv to Mevasseret, I found myself unexpectedly on the train. My natural instinct on being in that situation is to read a book, but I didn’t have one with me. I know I have various books uploaded onto my iphone-Kindle, but sitting in a train and looking at one’s phone isn’t quite the same thing.

As an avid reader since childhood, my most natural position in life is to be sitting comfortably, reading a book. In the course of my years in London, like most denizens of that city I spent many hours travelling by train (the infamous Tube), going to and from school, university or work, and could not contemplate any journey without having a book to read. But last week I had to endure that half-hour journey without proper reading matter, a predicament I hope never to have to repeat.

After many years of living and reading, there came a point in time when I felt that I had something to say. It was then that I sat down and wrote my first book. After that, I continued writing, and to date have written and published eight books, all of them novels about various aspects of contemporary life. In addition, as an amateur painter, I managed with the help of my son to produce book covers based on my own watercolour paintings. All my books are available from Amazon in paperback, ebook and audiobook form.

My first novel, The Balancing Game; a Child Between Two Worlds, a Society Approaching War, came out in 2013. It describes the dilemmas faced by a child growing up in an orthodox Jewish household in post-war Britain. The book focuses on the duality of the child’s life in a wider non-Jewish society and her relationships with the people around her. Interspersed with accounts of aspects of Naomi’s life are the reminiscences of a young woman, Felicity, who is living in Jerusalem and expecting her first child. As she tries to navigate the unfamiliar territory of married life the general and political atmosphere deteriorates, becoming threatening and even ferocious, eventually erupting into the Six-Day War of 1967.  

Pregnant Felicity is forced to negotiate that period of time, with its initial tension, actual combat, ending in victory and elation, while contending with her own emotional roller-coaster. She clings to the idea of the spirit displayed by London’s inhabitants during the Second World War, when the Nazis bombed London, and their defiance of the Blitz. Felicity does her best to emulate that idea, and manages to get through all the difficulties, emerging into the additional trial of going into labour and giving birth to her first child.

It is only after enduring the physical ordeal of ‘natural birth’ that Felicity is able to come to terms with the events that overshadowed her own childhood and face her future as a mother.

People who have read the book have told me that they enjoyed it and thought it was well written, though some family members have expressed reservations about some of the descriptions of some of the characters. My response has been that this is a work of fiction and any similarity to real persons is purely coincidental.

An Echo from the Past

Tags

faith, Israel, life, love, writing

One day a message appeared on my screen. It came from someone I had never met or known and asked about my translation of articles by Verdina Shlonsky.

As I read the message the memory of the composer, Verdina Shlonsky, and her articles about French composers she had known in Paris, came flooding back. I recalled her as a kind, elderly lady who lived in a small apartment on the top floor of an old Tel Aviv building with virtually no furniture other than a piano and a couch. I remember that she told me that she had originally written the articles in French and that her brother, Abraham Shlonsky, had translated them into Hebrew. She had hoped in this way to have them published in the Hebrew press, enabling her to earn a few pennies. I don’t remember encountering any particular difficulties when translating the articles into English, even though Abraham Shlonsky is known for his extensive knowledge of Hebrew.

It must have been in the 1980s, in the pre-computer age, when my work as a translator involved sitting down at my little Olivetti typewriter on my kitchen table, which had to be cleared away when it came time to make lunch for my children. I inserted carbon paper between the pages I was typing in order to obtain copies, but unfortunately I no longer have them in my possession.

The message came from Irit Youngerman, who is the editor of Min-Ad Israel Studies in Musicology and who came across my original typescripts in the archive of the Institute, and asked me to write about my recollections of Verdina Shlonsky.

In those pre-computer days I presume that Verdina was not happy with having the translated material sent by post and wanted me to deliver it to her in person. I must have agreed to this despite the inconvenience involved, and perhaps used the opportunity to visit my aunt who also lived in Tel Aviv.

At the time I had never heard of most of the French composers that Verdina wrote about, but today many of those names are quite familiar to music-lovers everywhere.

All I can remember of Verdina is that she was obviously short of cash, and while at first she was able to pay me for my services, after a certain point her funds ran out and she begged me to take one of her paintings instead. I evidently felt unable to refuse, and chose the picture that heads this article from among several that were in her sketchpad. She kindly inscribed it for me, signing her name and writing ‘to dear Dorothea, November 1986.’ I had the picture framed and it now hangs in my study near my desk so that I can see it and remember Verdina as I work. Her music is occasionally played on the music programme in Israel, and it always gives me great pleasure to hear it and to know that her name is not completely forgotten