Scan barcode
textpublishing's review against another edition
5.0
‘Written with great talent, momentum and ingenuity…it expands the borders of literature to reveal new landscapes.’
Amos Oz
‘One of the most intriguing writers in Israeli literature today.’
Haaretz
‘A book that is a fascinating and charged document about the meaning of home, security and freedom, on both sides of the divide.’
NRG
‘Quite possibly, Dostoyevsky would write like this if he lived in Israel today.’
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Good People
‘Good People rewards the reader’s patience while mining a tragic sense of irony that extends all the way to its title.’
Big Issue on Good People
‘Baram uses intense geographical plotting and is chillingly eloquent…[Good People] is tremendous. I read it in two sittings and I learned a lot. How does a man in his early 30s know how to write like this?’
Australian on Good People
‘Good People is a richly textured panorama of German and Russian life…This ample novel lives most memorably through Baram’s vignettes of people, dwellings, cities, landscapes and the like that seem to lie, at times, at the periphery of its central concerns.’
Age/Sydney Morning Herald on Good People
‘A groundbreaker…Riveting reading.’
Qantas Magazine on Good People
‘Precise and evocative, Good People is a riveting glimpse into a different place and a different time.’
Canberra Weekly on Good People
‘Astonishingly powerful…[A] compelling, important story.’
New Zealand Listener on Good People
‘An honest and troubling snapshot of Israel...From horror to fatigue to indifference, an important look forward and back that provides a grass-roots sense that one state needs to satisfy sovereignty for all.’
Kirkus Review
‘An engaging, fast-paced odyssey that conveys an intimate understanding of why peace remains so elusive…Nir Baram does what more people in the region should undertake: a grand listening tour that encompasses all sides of the conflict. The author is a good listener, too, albeit one who isn’t afraid to ask hard questions.’
Christian Science Monitor
‘Baram brings an open heart and mind to exploring the difficulties of coexistence where physical and emotional walls do harm on both sides, reaching beyond headline to explore the lives of Palestinians and Jews of different generations.’
Booklist
‘Nir Baram is an Israeli novelist, a highly respected journalist and an accomplished editor. So it is hardly surprising that his description of his journey around East Jerusalem and the West Bank is eminently readable, although much of what he recounts is worrying enough to give the reader many sleepless nights despite the shafts of optimism that occasionally shine through the text.’
Arts Hub
‘An essential guide to the human elements of Israel’s current crisis of identity…Baram’s work is compassionate, considered and sensitive. For the non-specialist, it is both fascinating and vital for understanding this labyrinthine conflict…This is a brave and balanced report. It is quintessential reading.’
Southland Times
‘This book is not just insightful background. It is an essential guide to the human elements of Israel’s current crisis of identity…Baram’s work is compassionate, considered and sensitive. For the non-specialist, it is both fascinating and vital for understanding this labyrinthine conflict…This is a brave and balanced report. It is quintessential reading.’
Dominion Post
‘This is essential reading for those who wish to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and for those who already think they do.’
Australian
‘To hear it from the people who currently live in the occupied territories—650,000 Jewish settlers and 27 million Palestinians—it is now as much a zero-sum game as ever. Their voices come through in A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a wide-ranging travelogue…The great virtue of his book is that Baram lets his interlocutors speak for themselves. Long stretches are verbatim dialogues. And what he hears is total and irreconcilable difference.’
New York Times Book Review
‘[Baram’s] writing has a "you are there'' quality; people come alive in his vivid, emotional prose...The people's lives are described in rich imagery: the beauty of the landscape and the humanity of the villagers, settlers and townspeople come through in descriptions of their diverse cultures.’
Otago Daily Times
‘Baram’s sensitive and compassionate account is a clear-eyed, essential guide to a complex reality.’
Toowoomba Chronicle
Amos Oz
‘One of the most intriguing writers in Israeli literature today.’
Haaretz
‘A book that is a fascinating and charged document about the meaning of home, security and freedom, on both sides of the divide.’
NRG
‘Quite possibly, Dostoyevsky would write like this if he lived in Israel today.’
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Good People
‘Good People rewards the reader’s patience while mining a tragic sense of irony that extends all the way to its title.’
Big Issue on Good People
‘Baram uses intense geographical plotting and is chillingly eloquent…[Good People] is tremendous. I read it in two sittings and I learned a lot. How does a man in his early 30s know how to write like this?’
Australian on Good People
‘Good People is a richly textured panorama of German and Russian life…This ample novel lives most memorably through Baram’s vignettes of people, dwellings, cities, landscapes and the like that seem to lie, at times, at the periphery of its central concerns.’
Age/Sydney Morning Herald on Good People
‘A groundbreaker…Riveting reading.’
Qantas Magazine on Good People
‘Precise and evocative, Good People is a riveting glimpse into a different place and a different time.’
Canberra Weekly on Good People
‘Astonishingly powerful…[A] compelling, important story.’
New Zealand Listener on Good People
‘An honest and troubling snapshot of Israel...From horror to fatigue to indifference, an important look forward and back that provides a grass-roots sense that one state needs to satisfy sovereignty for all.’
Kirkus Review
‘An engaging, fast-paced odyssey that conveys an intimate understanding of why peace remains so elusive…Nir Baram does what more people in the region should undertake: a grand listening tour that encompasses all sides of the conflict. The author is a good listener, too, albeit one who isn’t afraid to ask hard questions.’
Christian Science Monitor
‘Baram brings an open heart and mind to exploring the difficulties of coexistence where physical and emotional walls do harm on both sides, reaching beyond headline to explore the lives of Palestinians and Jews of different generations.’
Booklist
‘Nir Baram is an Israeli novelist, a highly respected journalist and an accomplished editor. So it is hardly surprising that his description of his journey around East Jerusalem and the West Bank is eminently readable, although much of what he recounts is worrying enough to give the reader many sleepless nights despite the shafts of optimism that occasionally shine through the text.’
Arts Hub
‘An essential guide to the human elements of Israel’s current crisis of identity…Baram’s work is compassionate, considered and sensitive. For the non-specialist, it is both fascinating and vital for understanding this labyrinthine conflict…This is a brave and balanced report. It is quintessential reading.’
Southland Times
‘This book is not just insightful background. It is an essential guide to the human elements of Israel’s current crisis of identity…Baram’s work is compassionate, considered and sensitive. For the non-specialist, it is both fascinating and vital for understanding this labyrinthine conflict…This is a brave and balanced report. It is quintessential reading.’
Dominion Post
‘This is essential reading for those who wish to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and for those who already think they do.’
Australian
‘To hear it from the people who currently live in the occupied territories—650,000 Jewish settlers and 27 million Palestinians—it is now as much a zero-sum game as ever. Their voices come through in A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a wide-ranging travelogue…The great virtue of his book is that Baram lets his interlocutors speak for themselves. Long stretches are verbatim dialogues. And what he hears is total and irreconcilable difference.’
New York Times Book Review
‘[Baram’s] writing has a "you are there'' quality; people come alive in his vivid, emotional prose...The people's lives are described in rich imagery: the beauty of the landscape and the humanity of the villagers, settlers and townspeople come through in descriptions of their diverse cultures.’
Otago Daily Times
‘Baram’s sensitive and compassionate account is a clear-eyed, essential guide to a complex reality.’
Toowoomba Chronicle
taratearex's review against another edition
4.0
Heartbreaking and uplifting, highly recommend, but I'd say it's written for people who have already read about history and issues in Palestine and Israel, or at least have a generally understanding, he doesn't explain or define much that he references, it's more about the people and the conversations he had and looks more at current/future issues, with references to the history. Really good and through provoking.
yossikhe's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent, and crude, portrait by Nir Baram of what happens on the Occupied Territories. He talks with settlers and Palestinians alike and presents them for how they are: humans. With flaws, feelings, ideas and problems. The multiple texts cover a wide-range of issues that take place in the multifarious West Bank and East Jerusalem: from economic discrepancies to modern Yeshivas whose objective is connivence with the local Palestinians or a family mourning a children. This book, I believe, is the modern version of The Yellow Wind by Grossman and The Land of Israel by Oz. It’s interesting to see how the views have changed on both sides since the late 80s/early 90s. And it’s heart-wrenching how both sides have arrived to the conclusion that peace is impossible, and that there’s no partner. Although I don’t agree with Baram’s conclusion that the Two-State Solution is dead, I agree with his premise, the one that every good book I’ve read on this subject has: the main problem is the lack of understanding and empathy between Israelis and Palestinians.
leda's review
4.0
A Land without Borders is a journey that lasted more than a year, around West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In a series of 12 chapters, the Israeli journalist and author Nir Baram recounts his journey and discussions with people from diverse backgrounds – Israeli and Palestinians – throughout the country from Palestinian refugee camps, to Israeli settlements and from crossings like Kalandia to Al-Aqsa Temple Mount. He provides a direct, honest, painful even shocking overview of the misery and violence and the impacts of occupation on communities, families and individuals across the West Bank.
Baram offers a new insight into a conflict that lasts fifty years and reveals a troubling situation of Israel- both Palestinian and Israeli. At the beginning of his book Nir Baram poses three questions:
Had the West Bank become a different place since the 1967 war?
Where the two states solution implementable anymore?
Were Israelis and Palestinians acknowledging the core of the conflict?
By now more than 550.000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and they are spreading further partly through outposts. In the meantime, Palestinians continue to face serious threats, destruction to homes, loss of land, assets and livelihoods, forced displacement and restrictions on freedom of movement, insecurity and psychological distress. Palestinians, natives of Jerusalem, do not have the same rights as Jews. Separating by the wall, the Palestinians districts are not accessible to ambulances services or waste collection. Palestinians are tread as second class citizens.
Most Israelis supress any knowledge of the hardship of the daily lives at the occupation partly because, Nir Baram argues, it will contaminate their political illusions. At the same time, they don’t want really to talk about Israel’s political future, “making to indeed with generalizations, complaints and vague predictions, peppered with black humour. I realised”, says Baram, “that what has evolved in Israel over the past few years is a collective repression of the future.”
Nir Baram calls the period of occupation a demonic time. He thinks that the traditional two-states solution has failed. He proposes an alternative solution, a project called “Two states, one homeland”, meaning two separate states within the 1967 borders that will maintain free movement between them, equal rights, and where settlers do not lose their homes. That, of course, means that some settlers would be under Palestinian sovereignty but they would no longer be settlers, they would be citizens.
Is Nir Baram’s vision utopian? Perhaps. But at least he has a vision, which surprisingly have found some unexpected supporters in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, whereas all the political steps that have been taken in the past decades, have all but failed.
More...