Reads devastatingly true…A novel that resists offering a false sense of hope in the face of conflict.” — New York Times Book Review
“Intersecting lives in modern-day Israel and Palestine overlap in a tapestry of tales in this compelling, rich novel that delves into universal themes of homeland, freedom, and true security.” — GMA.com Best Books
“Sacks deftly zooms in on the perspectives of a broad cast of characters…She reveals with startling intimacy what it’s like to live in the center of one of the world’s most divisive conflicts.” — Real Simple Top Picks
“An American novel manages, for once, to get Israel right…I loved it. By the end of the novel, I was emotionally exhausted but also deeply appreciative of the care and nuance on every page, and the plot’s purposeful irresolution.” — Los Angeles Times
“Employs a large cast of characters with interwoven stories that represent the many ideologies and truths at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As these characters fight for the future they believe in, a common humanity reveals itself in heart-wrenching ways.” — Elle Magazine Best Books of 2021
“A novel of panoramic ambition, scope and complexity . . . whose characters can never entirely escape the undertow of the region’s conflicts, which shape their most intimate interactions. Sacks writes with a generosity and gentleness at odds with her troubling subject matter. . . . It is thrilling is to see how cleverly she fits the puzzle pieces of her narrative together, linking all those lives with far fewer than six degrees of separation between them.” — Jewish Forward
"Ambitious and expansive. . . . A poignant humanizing of the story as characters battle for security and dignity…But there is beauty, too, the beauty we all deserve to have—in matters of family or love or marriage." — Texas Public Radio
“A stunning first novel . . . imbued with foreboding at every turn. . . . Through her vibrant characters, Sacks paints a moving and powerful portrait of those who love the region passionately despite its many tensions and dangers.” — Booklist (starred review)
“In her enthralling kaleidoscope of a first novel, Rebecca Sacks coldly, hotly, deftly, examines the violence that can underpin solidarity, and the vice grip of history on our present. CITY OF A THOUSAND GATES reminded me what fiction can do that ideology and religion cannot: Show us our paradoxes.” — Danzy Senna
“This beautiful novel manages to inhabit the experience of multiple characters across the Israel/Palestine divide. It is fascinating, compelling, and propulsive, building to a conclusion that is as inevitable as it is shocking.” — Ayelet Waldman
Reads devastatingly true…A novel that resists offering a false sense of hope in the face of conflict.
New York Times Book Review
In her enthralling kaleidoscope of a first novel, Rebecca Sacks coldly, hotly, deftly, examines the violence that can underpin solidarity, and the vice grip of history on our present. CITY OF A THOUSAND GATES reminded me what fiction can do that ideology and religion cannot: Show us our paradoxes.
Sacks deftly zooms in on the perspectives of a broad cast of characters…She reveals with startling intimacy what it’s like to live in the center of one of the world’s most divisive conflicts.
Intersecting lives in modern-day Israel and Palestine overlap in a tapestry of tales in this compelling, rich novel that delves into universal themes of homeland, freedom, and true security.
Employs a large cast of characters with interwoven stories that represent the many ideologies and truths at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As these characters fight for the future they believe in, a common humanity reveals itself in heart-wrenching ways.
Elle Magazine Best Books of 2021
"Ambitious and expansive. . . . A poignant humanizing of the story as characters battle for security and dignity…But there is beauty, too, the beauty we all deserve to have—in matters of family or love or marriage."
An American novel manages, for once, to get Israel right…I loved it. By the end of the novel, I was emotionally exhausted but also deeply appreciative of the care and nuance on every page, and the plot’s purposeful irresolution.
A novel of panoramic ambition, scope and complexity . . . whose characters can never entirely escape the undertow of the region’s conflicts, which shape their most intimate interactions. Sacks writes with a generosity and gentleness at odds with her troubling subject matter. . . . It is thrilling is to see how cleverly she fits the puzzle pieces of her narrative together, linking all those lives with far fewer than six degrees of separation between them.
A stunning first novel . . . imbued with foreboding at every turn. . . . Through her vibrant characters, Sacks paints a moving and powerful portrait of those who love the region passionately despite its many tensions and dangers.
Booklist (starred review)
This beautiful novel manages to inhabit the experience of multiple characters across the Israel/Palestine divide. It is fascinating, compelling, and propulsive, building to a conclusion that is as inevitable as it is shocking.
An American novel manages, for once, to get Israel right…I loved it. By the end of the novel, I was emotionally exhausted but also deeply appreciative of the care and nuance on every page, and the plot’s purposeful irresolution.
"Rebecca Sacks gracefully captures intimate moments on both sides of the fences that separate lives that are more connected than they seem. By weaving together characters that range from soccer players to professors, soldiers, and journalists, she shows us that underneath violence and contempt, there is hope." —Javier Zamora
This gripping, multi-balanced tale of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict sweeps readers into a whirl of a story. A multitude of characters and perspectives move around two murders at the heart of this book, giving us a sweeping, ambitious, and deeply authentic look at the passions and preoccupations that ignite the region. This captivating novel will linger with readers long after the final page is turned.
In her enthralling kaleidoscope of a first novel, Rebecca Sacks coldly, hotly, deftly, examines the violence that can underpin solidarity, and the vice grip of history on our present. CITY OF A THOUSAND GATES reminded me what fiction can do that ideology and religion cannot: Show us our paradoxes.” —Danzy Senna
A nuanced, powerful portrait of what it means to be caught in the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank. I found myself and my family in the pages of this beautifully written, brave, and incredibly compassionate novel. I couldn’t put it down.
CITY OF A THOUSAND GATES is a stunning debut, expansive yet intimate in its embrace of multiple voices, the rare novel that holds the personal and the political in perfect equipoise. The Palestine-Israel conflict is brought into focus with devastating clarity through Rebecca Sacks’ deep, unwavering attention to the lives shaped by it. Characters who couldn’t be more different from one another, yet all are imagined with intense understanding and particularity, their strengths and their shortcomings treated with equal care. The degree to which this book loves its many characters feels nothing short of radical.” —Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Smart on the eternal sorrows of an endless conflict, City of a Thousand Gates is rich with the pleasures that only a novel can provide: the ironies, the insights, the puncturing of the political pieties. Panoramic in scope, devastating in its detail, Sacks’s novel spares no one, but sympathetically, emphatically, with tremendous love.
"Probing and investigative, City of a Thousand Gates illustrates the endless reverberations of political conflict and its violence within the most intimate corners of personal life. Sacks deeply humanizes a conflict that dehumanizes on every level.
The novel showcases the humanity, tragedy, and complexity of life in the West Bank… The characters’ interwoven lives will stay with you long after the book's denouement.
11/01/2020
DEBUT After a 14-year-old Israeli settler in the West Bank is stabbed to death in her bedroom, it's only a matter of time before retaliation begins: Palestinian teenager Salem is beaten into a coma by 20 Jewish youths. Vera, a German journalist living in Tel Aviv, chafes at having to write a puff piece about a luxury hotel when she would rather cultivate these important, hard-hitting stories. She interviews Samar, a Palestinian professor at Bethlehem University whose day begins with another stressful encounter with armed soldiers Danny and Ori at a checkpoint. When Salem succumbs to his injuries, Vera records viral footage of Palestinians spiriting Salem's shrouded body over a border wall behind the hospital, ensuring a martyr's burial. Through the eyes of these and many more compelling characters, Sacks creates a snapshot of lives shattered by decades of conflict. Parents, students, and soldiers live in a constant state of dread waiting for the next bomb to explode, while barriers, restrictions, and curfews curtail any semblance of normality for those on either side of the walls surely built to inhibit understanding. VERDICT This ambitious, forceful debut novel, likely informed by Sacks's years studying in Tel Aviv, personalizes with startling clarity the seemingly unsolvable conundrum that is the Middle East. This is a thinking reader's book.—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
2021-02-13
Jerusalem, the “city of a thousand gates,” is also a city of a thousand experiences of occupation; in Sacks’ debut, she has seemingly set herself the ambitious goal of representing as many of these experiences as possible. As they reel from twinned acts of violence—a 14-year-old Israeli girl in a settlement stabbed to death, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy beaten into a coma—various inhabitants and visitors in this contested region go about their daily lives, dealing with the usual complexities of friendship, desire, and marriage on top of the sensationalized politics that envelop them. The novel shifts among the perspectives of more than a dozen characters: Arab Palestinians living in Israel proper and in the occupied territories, Israeli Jews of various political orientations, American Jews with complicated and divergent relationships to Zionism, a German journalist trying to make her name by writing about it all. Sacks’ prose is evocative and often a pleasure to read, but her narrative sacrifices depth for the sake of breadth. Her dogged attempt to show the multifacetedness of this extraordinarily fraught conflict and humanize its players is admirable in theory but sometimes ineffective in execution. In her attempt to humanize the media circus that so often attends news coverage of Israel and Palestine, she actually ends up flattening it, as each character’s narrative feels increasingly like a counterpoint to another equally subjective narrative, a mere means to a didactic end. While some characters, such as Emily and Vera, are rich and complex, others veer into caricature, reading like boxes the author felt obligated to check rather than authentic, artful creations. With its tit-for-tat violence and carefully varied cast of characters, the novel projects an oversimple thesis that Israelis and Palestinians (as well as those with other stakes in the conflict) are both victims and perpetrators, both participants and observers in cycles of hatred and violence. The extension of that thesis is the treacly trope that if these parties could simply understand one another better, the conflict would be solved. To her credit, Sacks attempts to preempt some of the critiques commonly leveled at such narratives—for instance, she makes clear the imbalance of power in a fight between occupier and occupied—but even the inclusion of these important nuances feels inevitably formulaic. Sacks is a gifted prose stylist, but the stunning loveliness of large portions of her debut is unfortunately obscured by its formulaic both-sides-ism.
A promising talent in service of an admirable goal resulting in a disappointingly didactic novel.
