Sleeping on a Wire

Based on conversations with Palestinians in Israel David Grossman''s Sleeping on a Wire like The Yellow Wind is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the Middle East today.Israel describes itself as a Jewish state. What then is the status of the one-fifth of its citizens who are not Jewish? Are they Israelis or are they Palestinians? Or are they a people without a country? How will a Palestinian state―if it is established―influence the sense of belonging and identity of Palestinian Israeli citizens? No other Israeli writer so far has approached this touchy subject with such compassion or looked at it with so to speak bifocal eyes Israeli and Palestinian. --Amos Elon The New York Review of Books