Just thought I'd point out that the kid's name is actually Nono... (I read the book in hebrew..)

you could get in touch with DG via the Guardian newspaper in London. I know it has an anti-Israel image in israel, but that's a crock. Anyone who knows DGs work knows he would never involve himself with an anti-Israel paper. (he writes for them regularly).

Incidentally, the myth of Israel being a target of the Guardian has been propogated by Conrad Blacks' Jerusalem Post. Black owns the Guardian's competition in the UK - coincidence?

Black also is one of those messianic christians who is busy befriending jews until the day he and his chums expect Jesus to rise again - when one third of all jews will convert and the other two thirds will be "forced into the see". Who is the real friend of the Israeli people I ask...

Grossman has changed my life totally. Because of him (particularly 'See under: love') I have even been learning Hebrew. There was something about this book though that made me leave it on the shelf - dunno what, maybe the cover, some inbuilt snobbiness about a book about children - and it stayed there for years. More fool me...

I started it and didn't stop until the last page. Absolute perfection. Possibly the most uplifting read I have ever read, and I always had a snidy pessimistic view towards sentimentality. Again, more fool me...

This cat's like a personal tutor to me, and I cannot imagine life without his (and Nabokov - my other fave's) books.

....

in this turn pager muki betser reveals the secretive world of isrel's elite special operation units. told with great credability and a cocky attitude muki guides the reader through israel's wars , terrorist attacks and fight for survival. revealing not only succeses but also failures and tragedy.

I read this one a while ago, but recent events brought it back into the forefront of the mind. I remember that this was a really good book and gave me a perspective of the Israeli military that I never saw before. I knew they were very good, but I had no idea.
I just hope that we don't have to resort to the level of security that they have in Israel or Northern Ireland. Also, this book makes me want to read other books about the Israeli military.

As good as Marciko's Rough Warrior. True account no holds barred combat stories. Get it!

Having lived in Israel for 4 years I anticipated a novel with insight into the Israeli Psyche. All I got was a 3rd rate thriller, with no thrills and much tedious prose.

A great Avram Cohen story by Robert Rosenberg, like all the author's books, a real eye-opened about Israel: what CNN and the New York Times don't report because they don't know Israel the way he does. This time Cohen looks into what seems to be the accidental death of his protege, and finds clues leading to the Russian mafia -- and corruption. A must-read for anyone who loves a good mystery/thriller as well as anyone interested in Israel the way it really is.

Those readers who are searching for another of those cliche ridden thrillers about brave Israeli Mossad agents pursuing bloody Arab terrorists or conniving Iranian arm smugglers should not read this book or any other of his mysteries about Avram Cohen, an Israeli detective whose complex personality and the moral dilemmas he faces in his work reflect the Real Reality of contemporary Israel. It is an Israel that is a colorful social and political mosaic,and has a dark side that is unfamiliar even to those Americans and Europeans who observe the politics of the Jewish state on a daily basis: the decadent lifestyle of Tel-Aviv; religious fanatics and political extermists; Russian gangsters and serial killers;a society that is moving beyond the idealism and unity of the early Zionist era into a projecting the kind of political and social polarization that led to the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. Rosenberg, a former correspondent for The Jerusalem Post and Time magazine,who operates an Israeli based webzine is able to provide us with the flavor and the vibes of this New Israel. He is also a very talented writer that has created in Avram Cohen an original character that is becoming more interesting and more intriguing in each new mystery that is added to the series. I don't want to ruin the reader's pleasure by revealing the the plot in "An Accidental Murder." What Rosenberg does in his new novel is to tie the past with the present, focus on the way history, including the Holocaust, still effects the Israeli psyche. In any case, if like intelligent and literary mysteries, if you enjoy reading John Le Carre, if The Third Man is one of your favorite films, and if you are interested in the politics of Israel and the Middle East, you should get to know Avram Cohen.

Remember David Rosenberg? The guy whose strange, awkward but inaccurate translation of parts of Genesis and Exodus led Harold Bloom to expose his ignorance of both the Hebrew language and the biblical world in THE BOOK OF J? Rosenberg is back and ready to make more trouble for anyone who trusts his view of ancient Israel. This time he plays both translator and literary critic, about equally well.

Here is Rosenberg's translation of the beginning of 2 Samuel 11:

"Here we are: a year was passing, and it is the season best for the wars of kings. David sends out Joab, his own retinue, and all of Israel's army; and they bring the Ammonites to their knees, beseiging Rabbah. Meanwhile David lingered in Jerusalem. It happens one late afternoon that David rises from his bed, takes a walk around the palace roof, and from there, his glance falls upon a woman in her bath. The woman appeared very beautiful in his eyes."

Breathlessly dramatic but the tenses are all wrong, and words like "lingered" and "glance" miss the simplicity of the Hebrew text. Rosenberg subsequently has David try to "uncover more" about the naked woman in her bath, and has his messengers "beseige" Bathsheba, just as Joab is beseiging Rabbah. These coy, leering figures are not in the Hebrew text, either, which presents the affair in eight blunt words: Vayishlach David malachim vayikachah vatavo eilav vayishchav imah (literally "And David sent messengers, and he got her, and she came to him, and he slept with her"). This story is filled with ironies. Why is it necessary to add ones that aren't in the text?

Rosenberg doesn't translate any of the poetry included in 2 Samuel -- David's lament over Saul and Jonathan or the two psalms in chapters 22 and 23--but his translations of other psalms suggest his need to compete with his text, to substitute his own poetic idea for that of his source:

you turn men into dust

and you ask them to return

children of men

for a thousand years

in your eyes

are a single day

yesterday

already passed

into today

a ship in the night

Rosenberg needs to import the cliche of ships that pass in the night. There are no ships in the Hebrew. This is Psalm 90:3-4, which literally runs: "You return mortals to dust and You say: Return, children of earth. For a thousand years are in Your eyes as a day, as yesterday when it has passed, or as a watch in the night." (Tashuv enosh ad-dakah / Vatomer: shuvu, b'nai adam. Ki elef shanim b'einecha ka'yom ethmol ki ya'avor / v'eshmorah ba'laylah.)

(The blurb to Rosenberg's book calls him "the leading translator of biblical poetry... of our time." I hope he isn't starting to believe his own publicity!)

Rosenberg provided the translation for The Book of J, in which the Yale critic Harold Bloom had fantasized that "J" -- the author of those parts of Genesis in which God is called YHWH -- was a princess in Solomon's court or that of his son Rehoboam. For Bloom, "J" and "S" were husband and wife, sharing ideas and developing similar turns of phrase during their pillow talk. Rosenberg evolves a slightly different version of this fantasy. Rosenberg's "S" is a royal prince operating as a scribe and translator in the court of Rehoboam, a son of Solomon or perhaps a cousin. His mother had been a princess of one of the indigenous nations (Moabites, Amorites, Ammonites) whose struggle for autonomy had been quashed by the Israelite monarchy. This for Rosenberg is the key link between David and "S," for he guesses that David too was the son of "a Canaanite princess" who became "Jesse's last and youngest wife." For Rosenberg "J" is an older woman who becomes the companion rather than the wife of "S," and commissions him to write the Succession Narrative because of his similarities to David and their common sympathy for the indigenous nations Israel has displaced. How Rosenberg knows all these things is not clear, unless he too is the son of a Canaanite princess, and consequently has a privileged understanding of his subjects. For the Bible contains not one word about how many wives Jesse had or who David's mother was -- not altogether surprising given how seldom the Hebrew Bible mentions any individual's maternal descent.

Perhaps it is interesting to read the book of Samuel in terms of the conflict between Israel and the Canaanite cultures it displaced, but Rosenberg's ideas about "S" and his vision are undermined by the question whether there ever was an "S" in the sense that there was a "J." "J" has a unique vocabulary, but stylistically, there isn't any real difference between Rosenberg's Book of S and most of the rest of the book of Samuel. And you get the same dramatic ironies from the outset, from the story of Hannah and Eli, in the first chapter.

In my opinion, this book is a full scale disaster, dreadfully misleading to those who trust Rosenberg's translations or ideas about tenth-century Israelite society. Avoid this book, or better, buy Robert Alter's The David Story, with a superb translation of all of Samuel, together with fascinating commentary that is generous to all the scholars that went before him.

There are many reasons to by this book, but two come to mind most clearly...

First, the brilliant modern translations of portions of the story of David from 2 Samuel, and several of the most beautiful Psalms.

Second, the tale of the remarkable relationship between "S", the writer behind much of 2 Samuel, and "J", the writer of the Pentateuch. (The first five books of the bible - the books of the law.) According to Rosenberg, J, the brilliant woman writer and poet of Solomon's court, most likely acted as mentor and mother-figure to the young male prodigy S. Many of the Psalms and stories of David seem to reverberate with this close relationship.

As well, Rosenberg studies the indigenous or "Shamanistic" nature of S's relationship with the land, as reflected in his poetry, which provides new insight into the intense yearning for Israel experienced by Jews through the ages.

I highly recommend this book both for its scholarship and its artistic qualities. Anyone with any interest in David, the Jewish experience, Biblical studies, or poetry in general, will find this book a delight.

What a revelation! It's hard to read a novel or poem again in the same way after the illuminations in The Book of David. I suppose this must be infuriating to some who want things to stay just as they are, but I was glad to see that the Publishers Weekly review had an intelligent response: (Oct.13, 1997) "In this imaginative and provocative work...Rosenberg's interest is in evoking the characters who inhabit the biblical narratives, and his translations and transformations of the text are powerful and moving...It tells David's story in a way that reveals the characters of David, Rosenberg and "S"." What Publishers Weekly leaves out is that this will not only change the way a reader thinks about the Bible but also how we view contemporary writers as well. I always thought there was an element of creative fiction and poetry in the Bible, yet now I can see just how it was transformed by great writers.