About the Night

Name: About the Night
Brand: Brilliance Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Anat Talshir
ISBN: 9781531864040

Author: Anat Talshir, Evan Fallenberg

Narrator: Mel Foster

Unabridged: 14 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Published: 08/30/2016

Categories: Fiction, Jewish Fiction, Literary Fiction, Women

Synopsis

On a hot summer day in 1947, on a grandstand overlooking Jerusalem, Elias and Lila fall deeply, irrevocably in love.Tragically, they come from two different worlds. Elias is a Christian Arab living on the eastern side of the newly divided city, and Lila is a Jew living on the western side. A growing conflict between their cultures casts a heavy shadow over the region and their burgeoning relationship. Between them lie not only a wall of stone and barbed wire but also the bitter enmity of two nations at war.Told in the voice of Elias as he looks back upon the long years of his life, About the Night is a timely story of how hope can nourish us, loss can devastate us, and love can carry us beyond the boundaries that hold human beings apart.

About Anat Talshir

Anat Talshir has been one of Israel’s most distinguished investigative journalists for over thirty years. She has hosted a television show on current affairs and taught creative writing at the College of Management Academic Studies. Talshir has written and produced several documentaries, including the award-winning program Israel’s Next War?In 2002 she was awarded the Nahum Sokolov Prize for best journalism (the Israeli Pulitzer). Talshir is currently working on her second novel.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Clif on June 10, 2019

This novel (translated from the original Hebrew) is a love story frustrated by the Palestinian/Israeli divide. In 1947 Elias Riani, a Christian Arab born in Jerusalem, and Lila a Turkish-born Israeli Jew fall in love. Any reader familiar with history knows they’re going to be separated by the 1948 A......more

Goodreads review by Cari on May 15, 2016

I'm not entirely sure how to review About the Night by Anat Talshir. I felt that it was beautifully sensual and reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri, yet at the same time it often put me to sleep, thus taking me far too long to read it. I think part of it was just that this was a relaxing story that lulled......more

Goodreads review by Celia on August 02, 2019

A forbidden love affair develops between a Christian Arab and a Jewess. Poignant and romantic and full of historical info about war and division in Jerusalem between 1947 and 1967. The story is told by Elias (the Arab) remembering his life from his sickbed in 2006. Very well written and a compelling......more

Goodreads review by Sheri on August 23, 2019

Maybe I'm being too hard on this book, but Elias as a character just ruined it for me. So tired of "romances" where you're supposed to just forgive the male lead for everything because if you don't, you don't have a romance. I actually liked Lila a lot, but so much of the focus was on Elias and I re......more

Goodreads review by Ridhima on July 04, 2021

3.5/5 “How can you miss someone you’re with?” she asked. “That you’re beside me,” he said, “merely heightens the longing. About the Night is written with such dreamy and poetic prose, and the romance between Elias and Lila is shown so beautifully that it seems almost fluid in transition. Throughou......more