West Jerusalem noir / edited by Maayan Eitan ; translated by Yardenne Greenspan.

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Title:

West Jerusalem noir / edited by Maayan Eitan ; translated by Yardenne Greenspan.

Author:

Eitan, Maayan, 1986- editor.

Ashkenazy, Yiftach, author.

Bernstein, Ilana, author.

Dolev-Hashiloni, Guli, author.

Elkayam, Liat, author.

Elmakias, Zohar, 1987- author.

Fields, Ilan Rubin, author.

Greenspan, Yardenne, author, translator.

Hacohen-Bick, Tafat, author.

Hakimi, Tehila, author.

Lapid, Nadav, 1975- author.

Levi, Emanuel Yitzchak, author.

Rowner, Ilai, author.

Shur, Asaf, author.

Shabtai, Nano, 1975- author.

Sheḥori, Yaʻarah, author.

Ṿolḳshṭain, ʻOded, author.

Habibion, Sohrab, cartographer.

ISBN:

9781617752292

9781636141879

Physical Description:

232 pages : map ; 21 cm

Series:

Akashic Noir Series

Akashic noir series.

Contents:

A great bunch of guys / You can't see the occupation from here / Dos Is Nisht a Khazir / Murder at Sam Spiegel / Chrysanthemums / Top of the stairs / In the city of the cead / Eclipse / Arson / Seven ways to make Jewish stuffed fish / When slumber fell on me / Why did you cross the line? / Levy / Just one thing

Abstract:

"This anthology offers a fictional tour of Jerusalem, this time through the lens of the noir genre. Not all the stories in this book include a detective, a femme fatale, or a dead body. In fact, a significant number of the writers chose to avoid these genre staples. And yet the stories--each taking place in a different part of the city--sketch a dark imagined map of the city, where religious mystery dwells alongside the quotidian, claustrophobic hubbub of the Central Bus Station . . . The stories included in West Jerusalem Noir could not have taken place anywhere else. They reflect national, religious, and socioeconomic tensions inherent to the city and sketch an image of a concrete, contemporary, and complicated Jerusalem."-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Short stories.

Nouvelles.

Short stories. (OCoLC)fst01117043

Geographic Term:

Jerusalem -- Fiction.

Middle East -- Jerusalem. (OCoLC)fst01216276

Genre:

short stories.

Fiction. (OCoLC)fst01423787

Noir fiction. (OCoLC)fst01922488

Short stories. (OCoLC)fst01726740

Added Author:

Dolev-Hashiloni, Guli,

Elkayam, Liat,

Elmakias, Zohar, 1987-

Levi, Emanuel Yitzchak,

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Adult Mystery Fiction Book Paperback	120791003107498	F WES	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

FROM THE EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: 'This anthology offers a fictional tour of Jerusalem, this time through the lens of the noir genre. Not all the stories in this book include a detective, a femme fatale, or a dead body. In fact, a significant number of the writers chose to avoid these genre staples. And yet the stories - each taking place in a different part of the city - sketch a dark imagined map of the city, where religious mystery dwells alongside the quotidian, claustrophobic hubbub of the Central Bus Station... The stories included in West Jerusalem Noir could not have taken place anywhere else. They reflect national, religious, and socioeconomic tensions inherent to the city and sketch an image of a concrete, contemporary, and complicated Jerusalem.' FEATURING BRAND-NEW STORIES BY: Yiftach Ashkenazi, Ilana Bernstein, Emanuel Yitzhak Levi and Guli Dolev-Hashiloni, Liat Elkayam, Assaf Schurr, Yardenne Greenspan, Ilay Rowner, Zohar Elmakias, Ilan Rubin Fields, Nano Shabtai, Yaara Shehori, Tafat Hacohen-Bick, Nadav Lapid, Tehila Hakimi, and Oded Wolkstein. West Jerusalem Noir is being published simultaneously with East Jerusalem Noir, edited by Rawya Jarjoura Burbara. The companion volume explores the city with brand-new stories by Palestinian authors.

Reviews (2)

Kirkus Review

Fifteen tales that capture the magic and mystery of everyday life in West Jerusalem, which has been the main area of Jewish population from the time of Israeli independence in 1948. No volume about Jerusalem could ignore the occupation. This one kicks off with Yiftach Ashkenazi's "A Great Bunch of Guys," set at a checkpoint at the northern border of the city, and Ilana Bernstein's ironically titled "You Can't See the Occupation From Here," which shows that even in the halls of a great university, you can't ignore political realities. But most of the stories showcase different kinds of tension. In Liat Elkayam's "Murder at Sam Spiegel," a Mizrahi Jewish woman tries to find her place at a largely Ashkenazi film school. In Asaf Schurr's "Chrysanthemums," a father tries to conceal his daughter's involvement in a perhaps-fatal traffic accident. Translator Greenspan chronicles an aging writer's mental decline in "Top of the Stairs." But in the volume's longest and most iconic story, "Dos Is Nisht a Khazir," Emanuel Yitzchak Levi and Guli Dolev-Hashiloni offer a double narrative with a single theme. Just as signs at the Biblical Zoo inform skeptical haredim in ungrammatical Yiddish that the peccary is not a pig and therefore can be included in the zoo's collection of animals named in scripture, young Be'eri struggles to explain to his hoped-for girlfriend just what kind of synagogue he attends, where the Torah is read on Shabbat but men and women sit together in prayer led by a female cantor. The point of Be'eri's struggle to define his congregation, like the point of the zoo's signs, is to determine who belongs here. Whether these stories are peopled by soldiers, students, children, and parents, they keep asking, "Who belongs in Jerusalem?" and its corollary, "Who does Jerusalem belong to?"--the central questions of this volume, which handles them with heartfelt sensitivity. Pushes the boundaries of noir in a welcome new direction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

Jerusalem, as Israeli novelist Eitan, editor of West Jerusalem, comments, is a city unlike its biblical image. Life there is rough, tense. No bombs go off in these two volumes of short fiction, but reports of gunfire are frequent, and in Ilana Bernstein's West Jerusalem story, "You Can't See the Occupation from Here," an Arab cleaning woman is shot down by accident and then excuses are made up to cover the death. In East Jerusalem, Rahaf al-Sa'ad's "In an Extraordinary City" tells of a Palestinian father who loses the house he built for his family to a demolition order: the courts give him a runaround, the soldiers who order him out laugh at his plight. The East Jerusalem stories, edited by Burbara, are tales of everyday oppression, with impersonal government violence thrown in the mix, and the corrosive effects on victims' psyches. The West Jerusalem stories largely aren't crime stories either (with one exception, a comic caper by Liat Elkayam) but tales of Israeli angst in a world where meaning is in short supply. The best is Bernstein's Kafkaesque tale of hiding one's head to avoid noticing the violence that's happening all around. In general, the Palestinian tales work better than the Israeli ones, several of which are overwritten. But that's probably because the Palestinian experiences are more raw. VERDICT Rather than collections of crime noir, these are deep dives into the anguished psyche of a grievously divided city.--David Keymer