Dinner at the Center of the Earth

The new novel from the Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges-- a political thriller set against the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the Negev desert, a nameless prisoner languishes in a secret cell, his only companion the guard who has watched over him for a dozen years. Meanwhile, the prisoner’s arch nemesis--The General, Israel’s most controversial leader--lies dying in a hospital bed. From Israel and Gaza to Paris, Italy, and America, Englander provides a kaleidoscopic view of the prisoner’s unlikely journey to his cell. Dinner at the Center of the Earth is a tour de force--a powerful, wryly funny, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, and the man who improbably lands at the center of it all.

"[A] bold, compassionate, genre-hopping novel." —The New York Times Book Review

"Superb: a work of psychological precision and moral force, with an immediacy that captures both timeless human truth and the perplexities of the present day." —Colson Whitehead

"[A] brutal, beautiful masterpiece." —NPR
 
"Exhilarating." —Los Angeles Times
 
"Haunting." —Esquire
 
"A subtle, nuanced, fierce novel." —Julian Barnes, The Guardian

"One of more consistently brilliant, bold, and funny writers." —Dave Eggers
 
"Dinner at the Center of the Earth blends elements of spy thriller and love story, magical realism, and an all-too-real history of one of the world’s most intractable problems: peace between Israel and its neighbors." —The Boston Globe
 
"It’s difficult to describe Englander’s novel without giving something away. There’s a delicious puzzle that becomes evident as it unfolds. . . . As weighty and political as Dinner at the Center of the Earth seems, it’s also a plot-driven page-turner. . . . We must now compare Englander to Graham Greene as well as Philip Roth. And he comes off well in the comparison." —Houston Chronicle
 
"Dinner at the Center of the Earth illuminates the zealot’s blindness, the patriot’s struggle for clarity, and the enduring dream of a coming together." —O, The Oprah Magazine
 
"Englander writes the stories I am always hoping for." —Geraldine Brooks
 
"Moving. . . . A twisty tale of spycraft and false allegiances unfolds, but what stands out is Mr. Englander’s insistence on finding romance amid the violence and deception. . . . The ageless struggle between Jews and Arabs comes to resemble a desperate lover’s embrace." —The Wall Street Journal
 
"A literary spy thriller. . . . Englander is as wise and funny and original and moving as ever." —Financial Times
 
"An absolute joy to read. . . . A dark, profound meditation on the state of Israel and also a gripping thriller, full of twists and moral ambiguity." —The Jewish Chronicle
 
"A wistful fantasy of an impossible Israeli-Palestinian romance." —San Francisco Chronicle
 
"One of the best we have." —Column McCann
 
"A searing message about the difficulty of just action and human connection amid the pingpong match of retaliation in the Middle East." —Newsday
 
"[A] complicated but masterful exploration of the many contradictions of the modern State of Israel." —Haaretz
 
"A riveting tale." —Austin Chronicle
 
"Smart and intriguing." —Library Journal
 
"Striking. . . . A thought-provoking political thriller with some romance and cheeky humor thrown in for good measure." —BuzzFeed
 
"Clever, fragmented, pithy. . . . Englander is a wise observer with an empathetic heart." —Publishers Weekly
 
"Englander has produced a masterpiece of literary imagination that seems to mirror his own evolution." —The Jerusalem Post

Autorentext

Nathan Englander is the author of the novel The Ministry of Special Cases and the story collections For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, a winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.

Zusammenfassung
A political thriller set against the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of *For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. *A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
 
“Blends elements of spy thriller and love story, magical realism, and an all-too-real history of one of the world’s most intractable problems: peace between Israel and its neighbors." —The Boston Globe

In the Negev desert, a nameless prisoner languishes in a secret cell, his only companion the guard who has watched over him for a dozen years. Meanwhile, the prisoner’s arch nemesis—The General, Israel’s most controversial leader—lies dying in a hospital bed. From Israel and Gaza to Paris, Italy, and America, Englander provides a kaleidoscopic view of the prisoner’s unlikely journey to his cell. Dinner at the Center of the Earth is a tour de force—a powerful, wryly funny, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, and the man who improbably lands at the center of it all.

Leseprobe
2014, Gaza Border (Israeli side)

It’s never about you. Neither attack, nor counterattack. Not the three boys kidnapped, surely dead, or the child murdered in the forest, burned alive.

Sitting still in a chair outside your rented cottage, you wait for the click of your tea water come to boil. You shift a foot, and, at sight of you, a lizard turns the color of the sand.

Across the country, the soldiers scrabble through the South Hebron Hills. They crawl about, hunting the bodies, turning stones. And here, beyond the fences, the Gazans strip the markets bare; dutifully, they run their taps, filling bucket and bowl.

It is light still, bright still. And you know, with the dark, the missiles will scream out from the olive groves and the rooftop blinds, from the hospital parking lots and the pickup-­truck beds. The people along the coast will move into secure spaces in cities ever northward, mirroring the missiles’ reach.

And you, you will stay in your chair, and sip your tea, and watch the arc of the fiery tails as they curl overhead. Then will come the sirens and the burst and spark of countermeasure when the batteries hit their mark. So close is your roost that your only worry is ineptitude, if the fighters on either side fire short. This rattle and boom is as of yet nothing but the sound of the two nations ramping up to the inevitable war.

This time, as with every time, when the fighting starts it will be more terrible than the fight that came before. Always it is the worst, the most violent, the least restrained, a steady escalation. The singular rule.

And once the invasion begins? There’s no knowing how and when, or even if, the bloodshed will ever end. Only that both sides will battle for justice, killing each other in the name of those freshly killed, honoring the men who died avenging those who, before them, died avenging.

Because of all this, you understand that your own thoughts are unseemly. Your concerns outweighed and of no matter.

Is it your boy gone missing? Is it your son burned alive? No. No, it’s not. And unless that’s your soldier son sleeping alongside his tank at the border, your masked fighter, outgunned and unprotect…