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    Sadness Is a White Bird: A Novel
    Sadness Is a White Bird: A Novel
    Sadness Is a White Bird: A Novel
    Audiobook7 hours

    Sadness Is a White Bird: A Novel

    Written by Moriel Rothman-Zecher

    Narrated by Neil Shah

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where-four days after his nineteenth birthday-Jonathan 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, which his grandfather-a Salonican Jew whose community was wiped out by the Nazis-helped establish. 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 Laith-the twin daughter and son of his mother's 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. With his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage and loyal to your people, while also feeling love for those outside of your own tribal family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateFeb 13, 2018
    ISBN9781684410538
    Author

    Moriel Rothman-Zecher

    Moriel Rothman-Zecher is an Israeli-American novelist and poet. He is a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and received a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellowship for Literature. His writing has been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review’s “The Daily,” Haaretz, and elsewhere. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with his wife, Kayla, and daughter, Nahar. Read more at TheLefternWall.com and follow him on Twitter @Moriel_RZ. 

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    Reviews for Sadness Is a White Bird

    4.5/5

    25 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Is it wrong for me to say that I thought the parts about Salonica was where the books was strongest? There's a lot of stuff here about the relationship between young Jewish Israelis and the army, young Jewish Israelis and their Jewish identity and young Jewish Israelis and young Muslim Israelis, but a lot of it is glossily written and lacquered over with some YA lust, sexual experimentation and a cannabis haze. The giant and absurd coincidence propping up the centre of the book feels unearned and antithetical to the nuance that the author is attempting. This was a little disappointing on a couple of levels.
    • 5/5
      The title of Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s stunning novel, SADNESS IS A WHITE BIRD, is from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish—“Sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield.” As the universal symbol for peace, a white dove avoiding conflict is indeed a powerful metaphor for this sad story since the central message seems to be that clinging to notions of fear and tribalism can lead only to escalation, death and madness, while communion in all its forms has the potential for increased understanding, grace and peace.Rothman-Zecher frames his story between scenes set in an Israeli prison. Jonathan, an Israeli paratrooper, narrates through a series of letters he writes to his Palestinian friend, Laith. Jonathan meets Laith and his twin sister Nimreen through his mother’s Palestinian friend. The three young adults bond, sharing family histories, intimate secrets, and dreams. Both families experienced traumas brought on by sectarian conflicts. Jonathan’s great uncle and his entire village were deported to death camps from Nazi-occupied Salonika, while Laith and Nimreen’s grandfather was executed by Israeli soldiers for returning after curfew from shepherding during the 1967 war.The young friends spend time together exploring the countryside, Haifa, and the beach; smoking marijuana while obsessing about political and identity issues. Powerful scenes depict commonplace circumstances that exist in Israel today. While hitchhiking, the three are rejected by a Jewish couple and later ridiculed by a rowdy group of Arabs. Jewish privilege becomes evident at the inevitable checkpoint where Jonathan is passed through but Laith and Nimreen are detained for questioning despite all three being Israeli. In another scene, the trio goes in search of Darwish’s village only to find that its name has been changed and there is little remaining of its original Arab culture.In the face of conflicting feelings between his bisexual attraction to his two Arab friends and his overarching sense of loyalty to his family and Israel, Jonathan becomes eligible for military service. Against Nimreen’s advice to refuse induction, Jonathan joins the paratroopers determined to preserve and defend the Jewish state, which his grandfather was instrumental in establishing. He naively believes that this will not affect his friendship with Laith and Nimreen. Of course, this turns out to be a mistake and has tragic consequences. “My soldier dream was the fourth member of our group, following the three of us wherever we went.” A heartbreaking accident during a riot strains Jonathan’s grasp of reality and serves as the impetus for the subsequent refusal to follow orders resulting in his incarceration.This lyrical coming-of-age story balances sadness and confusion with moments of joy and humor. The narrative evokes the nuances of both cultures by employing both Arab and Hebrew dialogue as well as references to Arab and Hebrew literature. One senses that the type of communion these young people experience would be the clearest way forward for Israel. The joy of youth and love juxtaposed against the sad circumstances that persist in Israel today make for a powerful but unsettling read.
    • 5/5
      Once in a while if we as readers are lucky, pick up a book that effects us profoundly. For me, it was this book, I kept putting it down, to think about what I was reading, and yes even to let my emotions level out. The subject is a complicated one, Jewish and Arab relations in Isreal, but the author gives us a personal viewpoint, using three friends, two Arab, one Jewish. When the book opens, Jonathan sits in a jail, he is our narrator and their story is revealed as Jonathan writes to his Arab friend, Laith.Using a letter, we are privvy to Jonathan's most personal thoughts and experiences, essentially placed inside his mind. His conflicted thoughts, as now shortly after his nineteenth birthday, he is in the military, something all Isrealis of this age must do, but can't figure out where his loyalties lie. Do they like with the country he has sworn to protect, his grandfather insists the Jewish people are his family and that is all he needs to consider. What about his derp friendships, love for Laith and his twin sister? Where does this fit in, and how can he fight against a people who he can't hate. Learning the back stories of his own grandfather and the grandmother of the twins, leads him to only more doubt. As far as novels go this is short in pages, but large in content. It is powerful and intense. The author presents all sides in this conflict, and it is these many sides that Jonathan tries to solidify into a cohesive hole. It is a novel of a deep friendship, and a young man who feels greatly. I sometimes wonder what would happen if the young people on both sides of this conflict, well any conflict really, put down their guns and refused to fight any longer. No longer wanting to watch their friends die, their families and countries torn apart. Just said no more to following leaders blindly. It will never happen, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it did?Another read with Angela and Esil, this book probably the best one we have read together. I cherish these reads and the thoughts we share.ARC from Edelweiss.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written. Absorbing, heartbreaking.