S.Yizhar’s final novel reveals a boy’s loss of innocence growing up in a farming community in Palestine and then in the young city of Tel Aviv. Told from the retrospective viewpoint of the narrator in 1991, events from the character’s past in the early 1900’s – 1930 unfold. Through stream of consciousness, S. Yizhar explores the hardships and frustrations the boy experiences as the child of a pioneer. The novel is also the tale of men and women who devoted their lives to create a new land in times of hardship. S.Yizhar died in 2006 at the age of 90.
A recommendation: Read the introduction by Dan Miron, who has insight into S.Yizhar’s work.
A glossary would have been useful to briefly explain the allusions to newspapers and other written work.
