NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Narrator Mark Bramhall’s task can’t be understated; his performance must cover complex characters, each with motivations that become progressively clear. Englander’s audiobook examines interlocking stories and characters who are involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Scenes shift between 2002 and 2014 as relationships develop. Among the main characters are Prisoner Z, a spy who has been captured whose existence has been essentially erased. He pleads to the General for freedom. But, as the listener discovers, the General is not readily able to grant that request. Englander’s work is structured like a political thriller. But the work also considers issues of identity, allegiance, and revenge. Bramhall’s authoritative, deft narration emphasizes these bigger themes. S.P.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
07/17/2017
“It’s Israel. We let murderers come home on weekends.” This is what a young man, known only as “the guard,” initially tells his mother, hoping to resist her plans that he take work in a prison. He is certain there’s no moral high ground to be found, even on what she calls the “right” side of the bars. Plagued by the moral failings of the country, the guard wanted to leave Israel altogether. Instead, he takes the job and becomes both complicit in those failings—making him the most complex, human, and strangely appealing character in Englander’s clever, fragmented, pithy new spy novel. On the other side of the bars from the guard is “Prisoner Z,” whose story is pieced together over the course of the book. An American Jew who polished his Zionist idealism in the cafeteria of Hebrew University, Prisoner Z threw himself into the murky workings of “intelligence” because he’d been “afraid peace would start without him.” Except then he got in over his head, and the violence and anger rapidly spread in every direction, eventually ensnaring him. With chapters that toggle back and forth in time and in location, the narrative begins on the Israeli side of the Gaza border in 2014, before jumping to Paris and Berlin in 2002, a hospital near Tel Aviv in 2014, the Negev Desert, and back again. Englander (What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank) is a wise observer with an empathetic heart. (Sept.)
Library Journal
04/15/2017
A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a PEN/Malamud, Sue Kaufman, and inaugural Bard Fiction prize winner, Englander illuminates the tense and often violent relationship between Israelis and Palestinians and the moral complexity of their situation by portraying a prisoner locked in a secret cell and the guard who has spent 12 years making sure that door remains closed. With a seven-city tour.
NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Narrator Mark Bramhall’s task can’t be understated; his performance must cover complex characters, each with motivations that become progressively clear. Englander’s audiobook examines interlocking stories and characters who are involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Scenes shift between 2002 and 2014 as relationships develop. Among the main characters are Prisoner Z, a spy who has been captured whose existence has been essentially erased. He pleads to the General for freedom. But, as the listener discovers, the General is not readily able to grant that request. Englander’s work is structured like a political thriller. But the work also considers issues of identity, allegiance, and revenge. Bramhall’s authoritative, deft narration emphasizes these bigger themes. S.P.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-06-06
A prisoner is held for more than a decade in the Israeli desert while, elsewhere, a general in a coma hallucinates about his past life and a young man works to fund the Palestinian resistance.Englander's (What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, 2012, etc.) latest novel is an odd amalgam: part political thriller, part romance, part absurdist farce, it never quite settles into the story it wants to tell. First, there's Prisoner Z, who's been held for 12 years in an undisclosed location in Israel's Negev Desert. His only human contact has been with his guard. Then, there are flashbacks to Prisoner Z's time hiding out in Paris. An American intelligence operative, he's compromised Israeli secrets, and the authorities have it in for him. In the meantime, he starts up a romance with a waitress and they dash around Europe together. There's also the General, an infamous Israeli leader who's been in a coma for years; Ruthi, the General's former assistant and current caretaker; Ruthi's son, who happens to serve as Prisoner Z's guard; and Farid, a young Palestinian in Berlin who's working to fund his brother's anti-settlement activities. Chapters alternate among these various threads. Unfortunately, Englander fails to fully weave them together. His tone is uneven—sometimes he strains toward humor, sometimes toward drama, without quite reaching either one. The humor sags, and the political intrigue doesn't quite add up. If it's a farce, it's an uneasy one. Toward the end, Englander introduces a second romance, and this one feels rushed, tacked on like a donkey's tail. Still, there are moments of fine writing throughout. An uneasy blend of political intrigue, absurdity, and romance struggles to establish a steady, never mind believable, tone.
