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"A controversial, award-winning story about the passionate but untenable affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, from one of Israel's most acclaimed novelists. When Liat meets Hilmi on a blustery autumn afternoon in Greenwich Village, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Charismatic and handsome, Hilmi is a talented young artist from Palestine. Liat, an aspiring translation student, plans to return to Israel the following summer. Despite knowing that their love can be only temporary, that it can exist only away from their conflicted homeland, Liat lets herself be enraptured by Hilmi: by his lively imagination, by his beautiful hands and wise eyes, by his sweetness and devotion. Together they explore the city, sharing laughs and fantasies and pangs of homesickness. But the unfettered joy they awaken in each other cannot overcome the guilt Liat feels for hiding him from her family in Israel and her Jewish friends in New York. As her departure date looms and her love for Hilmi deepens, Liat must decide whether she is willing to risk alienating her family, her community, and her sense of self for the love of one man. Banned from classrooms by Israel's Ministry of Education, Dorit Rabinyan's remarkable novel contains multitudes. A bold portrayal of the strains -- and delights -- of a forbidden relationship, All the Rivers (published in Israel as Borderlife) is a love story and a war story, a New York story and a Middle East story, an unflinching foray into the forces that bind us and divide us. "The land is the same land," Hilmi reminds Liat. "In the end all the rivers flow into the same sea." International praise for All the Rivers : "I'm with Dorit Rabinyan. Love, not hate, will save us. Hatred sows hatred, but love can break down barriers."--Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature "Even the (asymmetrical) tragedy of the two peoples does not overwhelm this precise and elegant love story, drawn with the finest of lines. There are many astonishing things about this book."--Amos Oz "Rabinyan is a generous writer who puts her characters first. Rabinyan's writing reflects the honesty and modesty of a true artisan."--Ha'aretz "Rabinyan juggles cultures, languages, art forms, places, times, and seasons. Because the novel strikes the right balance between the personal and the political, and because of her ability to tell a suspenseful and satisfying story, we decided to award Dorit Rabinyan's [All the Rivers] the 2015 Bernstein Prize."--the 2015 Bernstein Prize judges' decision "[All the Rivers] ought to be read like J.M. Coetzee or Toni Morrison -- from a distance in order to get close. We might be born Montague or Capulet, but we can choose not to be part of the tragedy."--Walla! "Beautiful and sensitive, a human tale of rapprochement and separation. a noteworthy human and literary achievement."--Makor Rishon "A captivating (and heartbreaking) gem, written in a spectacular style, with a rich, flowing, colorful and addictive language."--Motke "Rabinyan's ability to create a rich realism alongside a firm, clear and convincing flow of emotional fluctuations. gives the work a literary momentum and makes the reading both compelling and enjoyable."--Ynet "A great novel of love and peace."--La Stampa "A novel that truly speaks to the heart."--Corriere della Sera"-- "One day, in the cold of early New York winter, a chance encounter brings two strangers together: Hilmi, a Palestinian born in Hebron, and an Israeli woman called Liat. A promising young translator, Liat plans to study in New York for six months and then return home to Tel Aviv. Immediately drawn to the charismatic, passionate, and kind Hilmi, Liat decides that their connection will be -- can only be -- an affair, a short-lived but intense memento of her frozen winter away from home. But their passionate fling deepens into love, and Liat and Hilmi find themselves caught between their desire for each other and their duties to their families; between the possibility of creating a life together and the fear that Israelis and Palestinians are supposed to be enemies. And as the weeks and days slip by, Liat and Hilmi must decide whether their love is worth risking the disapproval of their families, their friends and even their government. Written by one of Israel's most acclaimed contemporary authors, All The Rivers is a powerful, deeply intimate Romeo and Juliet story for our times"--… (more)
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The novel catapulted to the top of the bestseller lists because the Ministry of Education
The plot in short. A young Israeli woman, Liat, meets a young Palestinian man, Hilmi, in New York. They are both there temporarily. They fall in love and have a relationship that lasts a few months, during the winter of 2003. In the spring, they both return home - she to Tel Aviv, he to his village in the West Bank - and the relationship ends. They don't meet in Israel/Palestine. Their short-lived relationship is a common love story, except of course in the background is the fact that they come from two sides of a bitter national conflict. Sometimes they argue, but mostly the book focuses on the woman's thoughts (it's written in the first female form) about this impossible love.
Rabinyan writes well, in beautiful Hebrew prose, just as she did in her previous two award-winning novels. But truth be told, the story itself is quite banal. I doubt whether this book would have been such a success had the authorities - in a typically short-sighted decision - not made it famous by declaring it "liber non grata".
In my opinion, the Jewish-Muslim love story is not the problem of this book. Besides the banality of the love story, what is much more annoying is the way Rabinyan depicts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is not a political novel (maybe it is?), but Rabinyan manages to subtly convey her opinion about who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in this conflict.
A few examples:
- Hilmi comes from an educated family, who readily accepts his Jewish girlfriend. In contrast, Liat goes through painstaking efforts to hide her relationship, lest her family "hang her in public".
- Hilmi comes from a family that was deported from Israel in 1948, and when he was a teenager he was jailed for 4 months for writing graffiti. The soldiers in the military prison are described as minor sadists, who derive pleasure from making the Palestinian prisoners sing Israeli songs against their will.
- Liat constantly thinks about how her lover sees their relationship through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is constantly on the defensive, imagining his pains. Hilmi, on the other hand, is carefree and a free spirit (he is a painter).
- The Israelis Liat and Hilmi bump into in New York are described as loud, rude and selfish. On the other hand, Hilmi's brothers and friends are described as beautiful, smart and gentle.
And so it goes, on and on. Frankly, this is tiring. It is so typical of the prevailing zeitgeist among certain Israeli left-wing writers that it borders on the pathetic. My views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are well known to the readers of this blog, and yet I find such one-sided depictions of "who's good and who's bad" in this conflict truly despicable. I couldn't enjoy this well-written book because of this annoyingly self-deprecating, perhaps even self-hating, subtext. Shame really.
So maybe, after all, the Ministry of Education's decision, although misguided in its intention, is a blessing in disguise. Israeli teenagers are blessed not to be exposed to such dribble about the conflict they grew up into. They deserve better.
I was reminded of an
Banned in Israeli schools as inappropriate because of its depiction of an Israeli-Arab romantic relationship, All the Rivers is more than a romance; it’s political in scope. Yes, the novel depicts how individual lives are influenced by public and political events, but I also see it as a look at multinational vs. two-state responses to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hilmi is romantic and idealistic, but is his view of a multinational state also such? Is Ms. Rabinyan’s novel more sympathetic towards his character than Liat’s or is her portrayal of Liat simply more objective? I found myself looking for a political bent to this book, but will leave it up to the reader to decide. Either way All the Rivers is a good example of one very personal consequence to this divisive and alienating struggle and a look at two of the possible options for peace in the continuous Middle East conflict.
I saw this story referred to as a modern-day Romeo & Juliet, but it is not like that. These are not 14-year olds in wide-eyed young love, directly controlled by their parents. These are 30-year old adults, world travelers, with jobs and friends and previous experiences in life. The book description is also misleading. I don’t believe Liat ever considered having to make a decision, to choose, to “risk alienating her family, her community, and her sense of self for the love of one man.” This relationship was always temporary, on and off at that whenever they ventured into political discussions and arguments, and her sense of self was never at risk. They never came close to seeing the other’s point of view or entertaining the idea of looking for a way to remain together. They could have stayed in New York, but they never even considered that. The plan was always for Liat to return home, they were both close to family and homesick, and too molded by politics and history to consider change.
Rightly or wrongly, family and homeland came first. But Liat allowed herself to become angry and hurt when Hilmi did not stand up for her to his brother, while thinking nothing of wanting him to cease existing in her world when she was talking to her family. At times she was just a little too dramatic, and his absent-minded artist persona was hard to take at times.
The writing is strong and beautiful and the story is enticing. Descriptions of the food make you hungry, and descriptions of New York and Israel and Palestine are so vivid you feel like you are there.
Ultimately Liat and Hilmi’s relationship was not a doomed love story to me, but more a fling, an interlude, something that is never meant to be more than temporary: the summer love before you go back to work, the forbidden office affair, or perhaps more close to the royal and the commoner, where duty wins out. But as a story of how cultural rules and history can prevent love from ever really starting, about the pull of family and tradition and how politics and hatred shape lives and the future it was compelling and unforgettable.
This book did give me an insight into how intractable the division between the Israelis and the Palestinians is, even as Hilmi remains optimistic about the future. They both live with the damage the long conflict has done to them, creating areas where they can't communicate. This isn't a trite story of love conquering all, and even when they are together in New York, their relationship is a very real one. In the end, Rabinyan fails to stick the landing, writing an ending that carefully skirts around any hard decisions on the part of Hilmi and Liat, and one that also avoids making any sort of meaningful comment on Israeli-Palestinian relations. I'm left wondering if this careful circling around of the issues still resulted in All the Rivers being viewed as controversial, what would have happened had Rabinyan refused to allow her characters an easy way out?
There is no great resolution here, no grand statements. Their relationship is both wonderful and incredibly, impossibly sad. Rabinyan doesn't stake out a position on the conflict; she does, however, try to shrink it to a complex miniature.