The Almond Tree, The

"The Almond Tree."One of the most moving and powerful novels I've read. The kind of book that takes the reader into another world, a world of poverty and war, brutality, sorrow and love. And in the process we become aware of ourselves as human beings; the beauty and the horrors we create.What a ride. Man's inhumanity to his fellow creatures; countered only by a deep sense of compassion, justice, and love for the truth, whatever it is.Corasanti shines the light of awareness into the shadows of our ignorance; drawing our attention to a deep injustice, hoping that awareness will give rise to understanding and eventually, to freedom and peace for all.Most crimes take place in the dark, physically and metaphorically. And, this conflict, this oppression, this injustice, cannot continue in the light of a wider awareness.President Obama recently spoke to Jewish students in Israel. He said, "Put yourself in their shoes -- look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a State of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents, every single day."Awareness.So little of the history and ongoing events are known to Westerners. When we're told Israel has been attacked again and is defending itself against the predatory Palestinians we are surprised to learn that for every Israeli killed, 10 Palestinians die.Something is not right here, it doesn't fit. Who exercises control over who? Who has the money, power and weapons of mass destruction? Who keeps swallowing someone else's land? Who really is the aggressor? What crimes are hidden under the tired and oft repeated phrase "Israel's right to exist?"Don't we all have a right to exist, Palestinians included? No one is special here. All of us are equally children of the same Creator.Westerners are ignorant, unaware of what is still taking place, and can't afford to be! We have great wealth and power at the moment but, it cannot last when we don't grant to others what we want for ourselves.And what do we want? Is it not to live at peace with our neighbors, to make a living, to care for our families and raise our children in relative safety, with a roof over our heads, clean water, food, fairness and justice.Life has its own way, and if we refuse to share what we have with others we won't have it either.Corasanti's story will move you, it will present you with a dilemma. No longer will you live in ignorance of the ongoing Palestinian/Israeli conflict and it is that shared and growing awareness that will in the end halt the destruction of the Palestinian people and restore compassion and justice to the Israeli soul.Colin Mallard, author of "Stillpoint a novel of war and peace." Stillpoint, a novel of war and peace.

I've written a longer review for the blog Mondoweiss, but I'll try to summarize here.I'll admit, I started reading this novel with a bit of trepidation. A Jewish-American woman writing a historical novel from the perspective of a young Palestinian man requires serious chutzpah.Thankfully, what I found was an engaging novel with an impressive degree of empathy and authenticity. It reads like a combination of Mornings in Jenin and The Kite Runner. As such, it has the potential to reach broad audiences with a powerful message of Palestinian humanity that's sadly missing from the popular consciousness.According to interviews with the author (who spent seven years in Israel and was horrified as she began learning the truth about the Palestinian situation), the seed for the idea of the book began with a friend she met at Harvard, a Palestinian with an Israeli PhD advisor whose father spent many years in prison. Despite the harshness of his childhood (he was forced early into being the breadwinner because of his father's imprisonment), he showed an aptitude for math and science that allowed him to attend Israeli and later American universities. Ichmad's life follows this basic narrative, though it's set a couple of decades earlier.She acknowledges this is a rare occurrence, and the question of how Ichmad's success causes him to become out of touch with his fellow Palestinians is sensitively addressed. The book does not take a fantasist approach that the conflict will be easy to solve if we can just hold hands and sing kumbaya. Still, it shows what's possible when love of science (or humanity, music, or anything else) transcends love of your own particular ethnically-based privilege. Minds can open, and old wounds can begin to heal. (One is invited to imagine how much more so once some measure of justice is finally done.)Israelis are not demonized in the book, and this is critical both because it rings authentic (Israelis, after all, are not demons but human beings in a particular human context) and because it allows the possibility of reaching genuinely broad audiences.The book is epic in scope, beginning shortly after 1948 when Ichmad's Palestinian family finds themselves becoming "Arab-Israelis" with no rights to their own land, and continuing almost to the present day.There is no shortage of tragedies along the way, and readers with weak stomachs may have to put the book down occasionally before continuing on. But there are also moments of pure joy and humor and beauty, of taking stock and realizing that despite what has been lost, so much does still exist, with so much potential.As the book says: "You cannot go back and make a new start, but you can start now and make a new ending."

Es la vida de un muchacho pobre palestino, que de pequeño sufre desgracia tras desgracia, pero gracias a la ayuda de un profesor, y del ánimo de su papá, se supera, y llega a ganar el premio novel de Fisica. El libro trata de la relación palestina-Israel, visto desde el punto de vista de los palestinos.

Ho letto il libro in lingua italiana e l'ho trovato stupendo...tanto che ho voluto regalarlo ad un'amica americana per condividere con lei questo romanzo trascinante

One of the most beautiful books I've read.. I would recommend it to anyone. It depicts the life of a Palestinian and couldn't be written more nicely.

There is no doubt in my opinion that Michelle Cohen Corasanti is one of today's greatest novelists as well as a socio-political commentators. What she's done with The Almond Tree is highlighted the cause of one of the world's most unjustifiably maligned, and oppressed people. She has produced a beautiful multifaceted story which is in equal parts utterly riveting, shocking, and addictive. If you liked Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, you'll love this.

Beautifully written..the emotions that ran through me I felt as if I was part of the story line...a book that must be read from beginning to end in one sitting...I loved it..!!