Martyrs' Crossing
by Amy Wilentz
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Description
“SOPHISTICATED AND SUSPENSEFUL . . . TAUTLY WRITTEN . . . Wilentz knows the world she writes about very well, and her descriptions have a solid specificity that lends authority to her fiction.” –The New York Times Book Review “At a closed Israeli checkpoint, Marina, a Palestinian mother, clutches her ailing boy, desperate for access to Jerusalem and its doctors. When a young Israeli soldier waits too long before deciding to disobey orders, a martyr is born. Thus begins a graceful, show more painful, illuminating novel of the Middle East. . . . [Wilentz’s] prose tugs at the reader. . . . The characters are magnetic. . . . [This] is a very human tale of regrets, revenge, and the elusive nature of absolution.” –Entertainment Weekly “SO PRECISE, SO STARTLING, SO UNFORGETTABLE. . . . These characters are all pawns of history and politics, but Wilentz makes them live.” –Los Angeles Times “MAGNIFICENT . . . Wilentz writes with a prose style reminiscent of The New Yorker’s highest ambitions: crystalline, pure, faultlessly communicative. . . . Like the best documentaries, Martyrs’ Crossing allows us unprecedented access to a little-understood and often misrepresented part of the world.” –Chicago Tribune “A BRILLIANTLY RESEARCHED MEDIDATION ON THE CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST . . . Martyr’s Crossing matches Damascus Gate in the quality of research and the mass of intriguing characters–and yet it remains a lean thriller.” –The New York Observer show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
A story rich in human emotion set in contemporary Ramallah & Jerusalem. A Palestinian American who returned to Palestine to marry a Hamas activist watches her son die at a checkpoint as she waits to get clearance to get through to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem. The story of the political & emotional fallout of that tragic event is told from the viewpoint of the mother, her father (a cardiac specialist at Harvard who's also an activist on behalf of Palestinian rights), & the soldier who tried to get clearance for the mother & child & who is held responsible by the Palestinians for the child's death, and, to a lesser extent, the child's father and a PLO leader (& childhood friend of the child's grandfather, though they've become show more political enemies in recent years). This rich book is highly sensitive to the political & emotional complexities of the situation--a book I won't soon forget. show less
Wonderfully ballanced, unrelenting look at the conflict between Palestine and Israel on a personal level.
Palestinian Americans--Fiction.
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Author Information
5+ Works 483 Members
Awards and Honors
Notable Lists
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Martyrs' Crossing
- Original publication date
- 2000
- Important places
- Ramallah, Palestine; Jerusalem
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 173
- Popularity
- 188,701
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.82)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 3
