Welcome to Litsy!

I heard the author speak on the #velshibannedbookclub and the novel seemed so relevant with the war in Israel currently. A Palestinian. man and an Israeli woman meet in NYC and fall in love. Of course, with their backgrounds, things aren‘t simple. And I never saw the ending coming😢. Great read.

I read this book on our first short holiday since 2019. Wonderful translation from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen. Set mainly in New York in 2003, it is about a passionate love affair between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is what stands like a wall between the lovers. I didn't like the ending, but overall ADORED this beautiful book.

Beautiful and heartbreaking. This one will stay with me for a long time.

Liat and Hilmi meet in New York; she is Israeli and he is Palestinian. Can love surmount all barriers?

I really enjoyed this novel, which was banned in Israel due to its subject matter. Loved the NYC setting, which was beautifully represented, and the lengthy ‘asides‘ such as the descriptions of Hilmi‘s new garden; very evocative.

I thought both MCs were a little bit obnoxious in places, her more so than him, but that‘s love for you! ❤️ 💔

Some mystery #bookmail....

I *think* it might be from you @BarbaraBB as it‘s from Book Depository. But then I read the blurb on the back and there‘s the Israel connection so I wondered if it was from @Cinfhen ....

So I thought I‘ll be clever and see who‘s read it recently...Well, Barbara read it last month, but Cindy sent a copy to her as a gift! 🤷‍♀️

Anyway, it sounds so wonderful I want to put it right on the top of the TBR pile...

#auguststats #augustwrapup

Of 15 books these were my four favorites: one 5 stars, two 4,5 stars. It has been a very good month!

This is one of the most beautiful lovestories I‘ve ever read. Liat and Hilmi meet in NYC and fall in love but they know it won‘t last. Because she is Israelian and he Palestinian. A wall and animosity seperate their two countries, which are so similar in a way. Yet love like theirs gives hope that these barriers could be broken down one day. Because they talk and fight and make up and are willing to try again.
#Booked2019 A gift - thanks Cindy 😘

#AyUpAugust #CryMeARiver A love story that caused the Education Ministry in Israel to ban this book😡The story of a Palestinian boy & an Israeli girl who meet & fall in love while studying in NYC. However once they return to their homeland, family pressure and obligation leads to pain & heartbreak 🎶I cried a river over you🎶

This is a true story written in novel form, and what a story it is. It‘s beautiful, brutal, and heartbreaking all at the same time. It‘s the story of an Israeli Jewish woman who falls in love with a Palestinian man whom she meets in New York City. The freedom they enjoy to love each other and live as they want in the USA contrasts sharply with the brutal conditions and barriers that exist back in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Read it.

#winterkills #winterwonderland Liat, an Israeli, and Hilmi, a Palestinian meet one summer in NYC and fall in love.And as much as he keeps trying to show her they can last despite their culture, she is all too happy to remind him that in the fall they go back to their respective lands. This book was just heartbreaking. P.s. TrishB never heard this song before but totally love the sad sounding arpeggiated, maybe Moonlight Sonata inspired, piano 👇🏼

Book review for All the Rivers is now online - it's a brilliant read, both sad and beautiful at the same time. Check it out: https://goo.gl/RFCYFb

#getmovin #ThatswhatIlike in some books. Passages that have nothing to do with plot, but capture a spirit of a moment. Hilmi here is visiting his homeland in Palestine for the summer and just getting re-centered. There‘s about 5 more pages describing this garden work, his family‘s dog and his amusement at the discovery of a hedgehog, his family‘s visits, and it‘s all just so beautiful.

#Aprella Talk about #doomed relationships...Hilmi is a Palestinian man, Liat is an Israeli woman both are studying in NYC...a chance meeting sparks some serious flames but can a relationship endure when your people are at war?!? A very moving and heartbreaking novel...

#rocktober I just kept wanting to scream at Israeli MC Dorit #allyouneedislove. This paragraph is after her Arab lover, whom she is with in NYC, receives a homemade video of his family at home in Palestine. The last frame is the beautiful view from his family‘s apartment looking towards Israel. Dorit‘s resistance to love in this book runs real deep.

#theriver #rocktober
@Cinfhen @BarbaraBB
One of my holiday reads this year 👍 Enjoyed it, though sad.

Good in the beginning but felt like it went on for a bit too long

I wish there were in-between ratings.

I mostly liked this story of an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man falling in love in New York. But the ending seemed more a way of avoiding a more difficult ending, than purposeful.

I reviewed this on my BookTube channel for #WITmonth! https://youtu.be/1U0DfRsON8k. It fits the translation theme in a meta way as an Israeli/Palestinian couple struggle to find middle ground in New York. This book was a source of some controversy in Israel, which led to worldwide support and great sales. I love how Rabinyan explores her protagonist's journey through visual imagery. Wistfully nostalgic and thoughtful, beyond the hype. #JewLit

Really enjoying this so far

Love finishing a book in one sitting (4 hour train journey!) Not my usual sort of book ( though I say that more and more due to Litsy!) But really enjoyed it, people and love at the heart of it.
@Reggie 😢😢😢

Train reading home. Some good reviews of this one. @Reggie pushed me off the fence!

Contenders for today's book haul.

#controversial #jubilantjuly Here is a link to why the book All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan is being banned in high schools in Israel and some of the most ignorant experiences she has endured since publication. https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4754208/all-the-rivers-dorit-rab...

Hilmi and Liat, during a 6 month period in New York City, this Palestinian, Arab, man and Israeli, Jewish, woman will fall in love. Can their love survive? Dorit writes on how the fear of losing one's identity can have the ability to crush the most beautiful things in life while at the same time writing about the beauty of having a culture and identity to call your own. This book is a huge pick for me even if my heart has not stopped hurting.

I heard "banned book" and just had to have it.

This was one of the most moving love stories I've read in a long time. The impossible relationship between an Israeli woman and an Arab man living in New York City touches on identity, politics, and how much people are willing to sacrifice for love.

The most well-written book I've read all year. Poignant doesn't do descriptive justice. The author has dragged me inside the headspace of the character and keeps throwing intimate emotions and thoughts at me until I'm so uncomfortable with the recognition of similarities with relationships in my own past that lines blur for me. Her words are my words. Her pain is my pain. Amazing.
#recommendsday

It seems as though New York, beautiful and glowing like in the movies, is spread out at our feet. I feel that this huge city is also in love, drunk like we are. The buildings look taller and the trees greener and brighter, the night sky had a deeper color, a polished bright blue, the trains careen faster and rattle louder, and a huge glow of celebration lights up the streets with chaotic sounds suddenly layered upon the city's noisy music. 💕🏙🎶

I cling to the minor details of life, to the everyday rhythm, and I am forgiving. I casually explain to him and to myself that it's the passion of creativity, the intoxicating power of art that is ripping him. That is the source of all his emotional intensity and gushing divination, his wild mood swings, the signs and omens that assail him from all around, the tears.

"Balance," I recite, "all you need is balance. Get your life back in balance."

Everything really was going to be all right. Because yesterday, in cafés and bars and streets all over town, thousands of other young couples had met, men and women whose paths crossed and who had spent the weekend together, taking comfort in each other, salving their loneliness in this vast city.

Where do I start? How do I distill the first impression...? How do I extract his finished portrait, composed of layer upon layer of color, back into the pale, hasty pencil sketch that my eyes drew the first time they landed on him? How can I use a mere few lines to paint the whole picture with all its breadth and depth? How is it even possible...when the hands of loss keep touching the memory, staining it with their fingerprints?

Oh wow this book. This beautiful, moving, full of life book. This book that stirred up controversy in Israel for depicting a relationship between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man - they meet in New York and fall for each other. Can this last? She's afraid of her family in Israel finding out about her relationship. And she's only got a few more months left in the US before returning home. A temporary love. So precious. Unforgettable.

🙋 Seven years since I moved to the US and I still can only think of temperature in Celsius. Who's with me?

Halfway through this book and just loving it. I only realized via Litsy that this book is banned in Israeli high schools probably because it has a relationship between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man.
This article by the author explains more
http://time.com/4754208/all-the-rivers-dorit-rabinyan-book-ban/

I don't tell her about the moments when I can feel that he understands me, that he can make his way in and out of my mind's twists and turns, that I can look at his wise eyes and see the wheels of his mind spinning in perfect synchrony with my thoughts. The ease, the satisfaction, the comfort that fills me in those moments. The curiosity and the delight of pondering things together.

Any novel banned in Israeli high schools would certainly catch my attention. Why does Israel's Ministry of Education consider this book so dangerous? Could it be because it's a love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian? #DoritRabinyan #LitInTranslation #diversereads #bannedbooks

Favorite hoodie with a few of my TBRs: "I like to party and by party I mean read books" ✊???
#riotgram #bookish @bookriot

I picked this one up only because it was banned in Israeli high schools. It's a love story between an Jewish woman and a Palestinian man during their time in NYC. It's a really interesting way to show both sides of the conflict through the telling of their experiences and backgrounds as they fall in love. Both characters value their family and culture, and question their relationship based on how their families would accept the other.

#RockInMay Day 16 Look at young Bruce ?Hilmi & Liat are young lovers just like the two from#TheRiver however Hilmi & Liat are forbidden to each other. Hilmi is from The West Bank, Liat from Tel Aviv and even though geographically it's less than 60 miles apart, for these two its worlds away ?A realistic portrait of navigating rough and troubled waters. Still waters run deep...
"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?!?"

Promised myself not to write anything here until landscape view is available, but am breaking that promise to tell you to READ THIS BOOK! It's so incredibly well-written, imo, a long time since I read a love story this moving. That it's political is true, but that directly impacts the relationship, is essential to the story.

I was curious to read this novel, as I've heard it was banned by the Israeli Ministry of Education last year. Disappointed that a love story between an Israeli Jewish woman & a Palestinian Arab man would be deemed inappropriate for HS students 😔I think some of the beauty from this novel was probably lost in translation but overall I found the writing & storytelling gratifying. Underlying political tones but done fairly and impartially. 3/5 🌟

Started this last night, stayed up wayyyyy too late reading it. It's hitting all the right buttons....and yea, promised my son I'd play ping-pong when I finished the chapter😉

So I may have bought 3 books while out shopping 🛒 for fruits 🍉 and vegetables 🥒 The freaking bookstore is two stores down!!!! I'm excited for all 3 of my new books but will not read until I get through my requests first 🙄😝 #FebruaryGoals

The Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan in a talk with Swedish author Eva Åsbrink. Dorits latest book, Borderlife, created a great scandal when it was banned by the Israeli government. Eva Åsbrink is about the seminal year 1947.