The Hilltop

I have visited the West Bank, and even ‘got the T-shirt’ (it’s from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre), so I approached Israeli writer, Assaf Gavron’s novel with a certain wariness.

It’s the story of a group of orphans, oddballs and religious fanatics, which establishes an agricultural settlement in the disputed lands of what it calls ‘Judea and Samaria’.

The twist in this tale, however, is that the settlement is illegal, not just by international standards, but by the Israeli Government’s own laws.

Despite this, over time the farmers prove themselves as adept at harvesting a range of Government subsidies, and bequests from elderly Jewish Americans, as they are at harvesting their crop of rocket and cherry tomatoes.

Bernstein Prize-winning author Gavron not only makes the reader care about his characters’ very ordinary human problems, but does an excellent job of portraying the many fractured realities of their ‘Looking Glass’ world.