When I Lived in Modern Times

Winner of the Orange Prize for FictionIn the spring of 1946 Evelyn Sert stands on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine. For the twenty-year-old from London it is a time of adventure and change when all things seem possible. Swept up in the spirited chaotic churning of her new strange country she joins a kibbutz then moves on to the teeming metropolis of Tel Aviv to find her own home and a group of friends as eccentric and disparate as the city itself. She falls in love with a man who is not what he seems when she becomes an unwitting spy for a nation fighting to be born. When I Lived in Modern Times is an unsentimental coming-of-age story of both a country and a young immigrant . . . that provides an unforgettable glimpse of a time and place rarely observed (Publishers Weekly starred review).