I got a free ARC copy via Library Things.

I wasn't sure about this book at first. I was expecting it to be a fantasy novel and then realized the books begins more like a general fiction drama with such a sophisticated prose that I wondered if I would enjoy it or not. I'm glad that I read it to the end.

The book seems to follow the viewpoints of 3 characters: Aart, Fishel and Vince. Three different people that are trapped in the same strange circunstances despite it all.

Aart is a twenty something Belgian with a strong attitude towards prying the truth out of people while at the same time never revealing anything about himself which causes him a lot of personal life problems. He's a successful journalist in a small newspaper in Antwerp that oversees important court cases and takes advantage of his prying nature to get all of the gossip in the building's hallways. He throughly enjoys his job but he's having a hard time overcoming a recent breakup. An accquiantance of his named Sam encourages him to visit a nearby salsa club to meet women. While Sam takes advantage of using Aart as his wingman to approach random women for a chat, Aart sits down and drinks alone. Suddenly a strange man of Palestinian origin first dances with a local woman marverlously and then orders himself a drink which struck him as odd. Aart himself isn't religious and asks the man to sit down and chat. He discovers the man is named Nasr that was granted after a lot of hurdles in his life Jordanian citizenship and legally lives in Europe thanks to his father who is a literary teacher in a nearby university. He doesn't seem particularly religious which explains the drinking but Aart is surprised about his strong political views because his family was evicted from their home in Palestine and suffered great hurdles as unwanted refugees in both Lebanon and Iraq until they temporarily settled in Jordan. Aart tries to brush Nasr's hatred of Israel aside and befriends him as a person.

Meanwhile, Aart greets a nice Ukrainian woman named Janka who is grateful that he got her a translator job at the courts. Awed by her beauty, he invites her to a jazz concert and his prying habits discovers that she is a non practicing jew whose mother and uncle survived the Holocaust with very strong Zionist political views. They both end up sleeping together and now Aart is stuck in a quandary. He likes both Nasr and Janka as people but he's confused about their fiercely strong political views. He decides to keep the existence of his friendship of both people a secret to try to remain neutral.

A few days later, Aart goes to the nightclub and Nasr seems vastly upset. He tells him that Israeli forces destroyed the home of an uncle that stayed in Palestine and has lost contact with him. Aart feels genuinely worried about the welfare of Nasr's family and agrees to visit Israel as a tourist to try to deliver a letter with some money to his family. When Janka discovers he plans to visit Israel, she too asks him to deliver a priceless family heirloom that was hidden by an acquaintance of her mother for decades. It is a religious prayer cloth that her uncle who lives in Israel wants for his teeange son's bar mitzvah. Aart takes advantage of both helping Janka give some joy to her family and having a credible excuse to visit Israel without attracting unwanted attention to deliver the letter.

The chapter suddenly jumps to someone else's POV. Fishel wakes up in a stingy boat hostel in Aqaba Jordan with a piercing headache and no memories of his past life. A strange US tourist named Vince says hi to him but Fishel who can't even remember his own name ignores the affable man. The dazed man finds a backpack beneath the bed with the ID card of a reknown neurologist named Dr. Hamadi along with a wallet with some money. He stumbles outside and a taxi driver is already waiting for him. He is brought to Hamadi's fancy villa house and after a brief recount of his pervasive anmesia, Hamadi gives him a strange injection claiming it will someday cure his ailment, gives him some spare cash and he wanders aimlessly across the city. Fishel seems to repeat the same ritual everyday without remembering what happened yesterday and starts to suspect Hamadi isn't being truthful...

We are occasionally seeing Vince's POV. A friendly Texan backpacker that has been touring the world for almost 2 years, he bumps into Aart in a Jerusalem hostel and befriends him. Aart prys into his personal life and Vince merrily states that his father is an important senator whose political career has been hindered after his sister comitted suicide for unknown reasons. (view spoiler)

Aart's trip to Israel goes without any problems. He meets Janka's lovely family and they are truly appreciative that he brought the family heirloom. Janka's uncle Chaim Seigel is a medical doctor that emigrated from Kiev 15 years ago out of loneliness and married an Israeli Jew named Rachel that had 2 daughters from a previous marriage. He seems like a really nice person that enjoys his new life as the head of a memory research project in a Tel Aviv university. Chaim's adoptive daughters are willing to be Aart's tour guides during his brief trip, but his strong desire to help Nasr forces him to decline the invitation and heads off to Jerusalem alone under the pretense of a white lie to avoid worrying the family. He bumps into Vince and with some hurdles, crosses into Palestinean territory on two consecutive days which alerts the military. After a lot of hurdles, he finally locates Nasr's uncle who is apparently a wanted terrorist (Aart doesn't realize this) and he gives the elderly man that is hiding in a safe house Nasr's letter who feels deeply touched. Without notice, the building is surrounded by special Mossad operatives and Aart is suddenly arrested as a suspected terrorist sympathizer...

Fishel meanwhile has a plan. Tired of the endless blackouts and suspecting Hamadi's intentions, he purchases a syringe and fills it with ordinary saline. He busts a bathroom door in Hamadi's estate and manages to trick Hamadi into injecting him with the placebo needle. He wakes up in the middle of the night recounting yesterday's memories for the first time much to his glee. He sneaks out of the hostel when the taxi guy isn't around and reaches Hamadi's villa undetected. After searching his office, he steals a bunch of papers including his apparent Israeli passport, some business cards and a lot of money and starts a quest to both discover who he was while hiding from Hamadi's highly trained men that want to catch him.

As a whole, the prose is fluid, very well written and the research of the backbone of the conflict is indeed marvelously done without sounding preachy about either of the two sides. In a way, you get to appreciate both Janka and Nasr's characters and the reasons that drive them. Aart plays the role of the agnostic western European convincingly that is somehow tossed into the middle out of a promise to send a package to the family of his two new but opposing friends. And then we have Fishel's amazing journey of self discovery and the haunting truth behind him. He was my favorite character in the story and while Aart's story is slow to develop, Fishel's attempts to stay ahead of the strange men in black suits that seem to be everywhere kept me reading nonstop.

I can't read Dutch so I'm basing myself on the English translation which seems to be done rather well except that sometimes after a period, the next sentence starts. I grumbled when I saw Colombia mispelled as Columbia. Around the 54% of the novel, Hamadi's name was spelled differently and early in the novel Aart's name was once as well. Otherwise, I was surprised at the scant typos in the book.

This was indeed a surprising novel to read that was well worth my time. ( )

The triple perspective (Belgian, Israeli, Palestinian) was well executed to ensure an absorbing and challenging read. The plot and character development supported the excellence of this book. A few typos/translation glitches dropped the rating to 4 but do not substantially interfere with the flow of reading. I received this as a LibraryThing Member GiveAway. Thank you. ( )

I got a free ARC copy via Library Things.

I wasn't sure about this book at first. I was expecting it to be a fantasy novel and then realized the books begins more like a general fiction drama with such a sophisticated prose that I wondered if I would enjoy it or not. I'm glad that I read it to the end.

The book seems to follow the viewpoints of 3 characters: Aart, Fishel and Vince. Three different people that are trapped in the same strange circunstances despite it all.

Aart is a twenty something Belgian with a strong attitude towards prying the truth out of people while at the same time never revealing anything about himself which causes him a lot of personal life problems. He's a successful journalist in a small newspaper in Antwerp that oversees important court cases and takes advantage of his prying nature to get all of the gossip in the building's hallways. He throughly enjoys his job but he's having a hard time overcoming a recent breakup. An accquiantance of his named Sam encourages him to visit a nearby salsa club to meet women. While Sam takes advantage of using Aart as his wingman to approach random women for a chat, Aart sits down and drinks alone. Suddenly a strange man of Palestinian origin first dances with a local woman marverlously and then orders himself a drink which struck him as odd. Aart himself isn't religious and asks the man to sit down and chat. He discovers the man is named Nasr that was granted after a lot of hurdles in his life Jordanian citizenship and legally lives in Europe thanks to his father who is a literary teacher in a nearby university. He doesn't seem particularly religious which explains the drinking but Aart is surprised about his strong political views because his family was evicted from their home in Palestine and suffered great hurdles as unwanted refugees in both Lebanon and Iraq until they temporarily settled in Jordan. Aart tries to brush Nasr's hatred of Israel aside and befriends him as a person.

Meanwhile, Aart greets a nice Ukrainian woman named Janka who is grateful that he got her a translator job at the courts. Awed by her beauty, he invites her to a jazz concert and his prying habits discovers that she is a non practicing jew whose mother and uncle survived the Holocaust with very strong Zionist political views. They both end up sleeping together and now Aart is stuck in a quandary. He likes both Nasr and Janka as people but he's confused about their fiercely strong political views. He decides to keep the existence of his friendship of both people a secret to try to remain neutral.

A few days later, Aart goes to the nightclub and Nasr seems vastly upset. He tells him that Israeli forces destroyed the home of an uncle that stayed in Palestine and has lost contact with him. Aart feels genuinely worried about the welfare of Nasr's family and agrees to visit Israel as a tourist to try to deliver a letter with some money to his family. When Janka discovers he plans to visit Israel, she too asks him to deliver a priceless family heirloom that was hidden by an acquaintance of her mother for decades. It is a religious prayer cloth that her uncle who lives in Israel wants for his teeange son's bar mitzvah. Aart takes advantage of both helping Janka give some joy to her family and having a credible excuse to visit Israel without attracting unwanted attention to deliver the letter.

The chapter suddenly jumps to someone else's POV. Fishel wakes up in a stingy boat hostel in Aqaba Jordan with a piercing headache and no memories of his past life. A strange US tourist named Vince says hi to him but Fishel who can't even remember his own name ignores the affable man. The dazed man finds a backpack beneath the bed with the ID card of a reknown neurologist named Dr. Hamadi along with a wallet with some money. He stumbles outside and a taxi driver is already waiting for him. He is brought to Hamadi's fancy villa house and after a brief recount of his pervasive anmesia, Hamadi gives him a strange injection claiming it will someday cure his ailment, gives him some spare cash and he wanders aimlessly across the city. Fishel seems to repeat the same ritual everyday without remembering what happened yesterday and starts to suspect Hamadi isn't being truthful...

We are occasionally seeing Vince's POV. A friendly Texan backpacker that has been touring the world for almost 2 years, he bumps into Aart in a Jerusalem hostel and befriends him. Aart prys into his personal life and Vince merrily states that his father is an important senator whose political career has been hindered after his sister comitted suicide for unknown reasons. [spoiler]Aart unwittingly tells him that perhaps Abigail didn't commit suicide out of mere depression but that there was another reason. He suspects something is amiss when Vince tells him that his father has tried to pass legislation against the LBGT community and Vince adds the dots...[/spoiler]

Aart's trip to Israel goes without any problems. He meets Janka's lovely family and they are truly appreciative that he brought the family heirloom. Janka's uncle Chaim Seigel is a medical doctor that emigrated from Kiev 15 years ago out of loneliness and married an Israeli Jew named Rachel that had 2 daughters from a previous marriage. He seems like a really nice person that enjoys his new life as the head of a memory research project in a Tel Aviv university. Chaim's adoptive daughters are willing to be Aart's tour guides during his brief trip, but his strong desire to help Nasr forces him to decline the invitation and heads off to Jerusalem alone under the pretense of a white lie to avoid worrying the family. He bumps into Vince and with some hurdles, crosses into Palestinean territory on two consecutive days which alerts the military. After a lot of hurdles, he finally locates Nasr's uncle who is apparently a wanted terrorist (Aart doesn't realize this) and he gives the elderly man that is hiding in a safe house Nasr's letter who feels deeply touched. Without notice, the building is surrounded by special Mossad operatives and Aart is suddenly arrested as a suspected terrorist sympathizer...

Fishel meanwhile has a plan. Tired of the endless blackouts and suspecting Hamadi's intentions, he purchases a syringe and fills it with ordinary saline. He busts a bathroom door in Hamadi's estate and manages to trick Hamadi into injecting him with the placebo needle. He wakes up in the middle of the night recounting yesterday's memories for the first time much to his glee. He sneaks out of the hostel when the taxi guy isn't around and reaches Hamadi's villa undetected. After searching his office, he steals a bunch of papers including his apparent Israeli passport, some business cards and a lot of money and starts a quest to both discover who he was while hiding from Hamadi's highly trained men that want to catch him.

As a whole, the prose is fluid, very well written and the research of the backbone of the conflict is indeed marvelously done without sounding preachy about either of the two sides. In a way, you get to appreciate both Janka and Nasr's characters and the reasons that drive them. Aart plays the role of the agnostic western European convincingly that is somehow tossed into the middle out of a promise to send a package to the family of his two new but opposing friends. And then we have Fishel's amazing journey of self discovery and the haunting truth behind him. He was my favorite character in the story and while Aart's story is slow to develop, Fishel's attempts to stay ahead of the strange men in black suits that seem to be everywhere kept me reading nonstop.

I can't read Dutch so I'm basing myself on the English translation which seems to be done rather well except that sometimes after a period, the next sentence starts. I grumbled when I saw Colombia mispelled as Columbia. Around the 54% of the novel, Hamadi's name was spelled differently and early in the novel Aart's name was once as well. Otherwise, I was surprised at the scant typos in the book.

This was indeed a surprising novel to read that was well worth my time. ( )