More recently, a number of people have written fascinating accounts of their experiences in Israel. Oz’s/n the Land of Israel is a series of interviews with native j Israelis and West Bank residents that documents the wide range of political senti- j ments; his^ Perfect Peace is a semi-allegorical account of kibbutz life just before the j Six-Day War. The poet Yehuda Amihai offers insight into the soul of the modem Israeli in his Selected Poems. Both books, as with most major Israeli works, have been translated to English. Other personal observations of Israel include Saul Bellow’s To Jerusalem and Back and journalist Lawrence Meyer’s Israel Now. David ] Grossman’s Yellow Wind tells of one Israeli Jew’s journey to the West Bank just prior to the intifada. The West Bank Story by Rafik Halabi, an Israeli Druze television reporter, is an informative account. Fawaz Turki’s We Disinherited offers a I thoughtful autobiography of a Palestinian Arab, and Ze’ev Chafetz’s Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men is a hilarious look at Israeli society and politics.

For an Israeli look backward from the modem day into the past of Jewish experience, read Aharon Appelfeid The Age of Wonders and Badenheim 1939, which offer a survivor’s account of the Holocaust. Voices Within the Ark, by Howard Schwartz and Anthony Rudolph is an anthology of 20th-century Jewish poetry, much of which derives from the Israeli experience. David Grossman’s See Under: Love is a complicated account of coming to terms with the Holocaust.