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Washington Square Press
February 2019
On Sale: February 12, 2019
288 pages
ISBN: 1501176277
EAN: 9781501176272
Kindle: B074ZMLQMD
Trade Size / e-Book (reprint)
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Fiction Family Life
In this βnuanced, sharp, and beautifully writtenβ (Michael Chabon) debut novel, a young man prepares to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country. The story begins in an Israeli military jail, whereβfour days after his nineteenth birthdayβJonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell and recalls the series of events that led him there. Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laithβthe twin daughter and son of his motherβs friend. From that morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries, laughing uncontrollably. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, family histories, resentments, and dreams. But with his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage, while also feeling love for those outside of your own family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever. βUnflinching in its honesty, unyielding in its moral complexityβ (Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prizeβwinning author), Sadness Is a White Bird explores one manβs attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict.
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