Customer Reviews

A Trumpet in the Wadi

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3 star:		(1)
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This is a beautifully told love story told in the context of a conflict that overwhelms the individuals caught in its web. The characters are drawn so memorably, the cultures that come together described from the heart, and the meaning of family, love and duty are explored in a subtle manner that does not interfere with the telling of the story. It is a powerful indictment of war, and anyone who is lucky enough to read this book will not only be moved by the beauty of the writing, but will also gain a clearer view of the impact of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle upon the lives of the people who live in the region. A must read!!!!

3 1/2 stars, actually. As an idea, this book challenges the notion that Israel is really a "Jewish State" and depicts "Israelis" as being multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. This book begins with a Christian Arab familiy living in Haifa, in which a Russian Jewish immigrant rents an apartment in their building and then marries one of the Arab daughters. Part of what makes this book interesting is that the Arabs are depicted as "integrated" into Israeli society via language and even cultural interests, and Alex, the Russian Jewish Immigrant, an outsider. I feel that the reasons for Alex's alienation and his experiences with the Israeli Jewish society should have been discussed in more detail to show that even as he is supposed to be, ideologically, repatriated to his "homeland," and rejoined to his "people," he is not at all accepted for what he is there, other than by the Arabs. Even so, Alex still considers himself a part of "The Jewish Nation" and feels that it is his duty to fight in the Israeli army, something which offends his Arab in-laws, especially when one of their relatives in the West Bank is killed by Israeli Army fire. The significant idea raised in this novel is that both Alex and the Christian Arab families are outsiders in a different way: Alex because he was born and raised in Russia, and the Christian Arab family because they aren't "Jewish." In other words, Alex is integrated ideologically, even in his own mind, and the Christian Arabs family, integrated as they are natives of Haifa, and speak Hebrew fluently, and like the poems of Yehuda Amichai, but excluded from the ideological construction which defines the State of Israel.

The Editorial reviews do justice to the book; I can hardly elaborate... for me the best among Israeli authors today. Michael is a former commie in Iraq who has matured and wised up in the Israeli cauldron where Arabs and Jews are mortal enemies. The book will not pacify this bloodsoaked country but its readers will enjoy a well written bittersweet novel as good as the author's previous novel "Refuge" ("Hasut") also in English. "Trumpet..." is now also a good Israeli movie.

Michael Sami is a master at juggling the complex identities of his characters. In the multifaceted stew of modern Israeli society, he is able to present readers with characters with rich and complex senses of self. A Trumpet in the Wadi does not stray from this course. For example there is Huda (her name in Arabic is derived from the word 'guide'), the narrator, an Israeli citizen, an Arab-Christian, deeply immersed in Israel Jewish Hebrew culture (she reads Yehuda Amichai's poems); she falls in love with a Russian Jewish immigrant with little or no Jewish identity. All of Sami's novels show that there is no clear cut border between one social self and another. They all bleed together. And here he accomplishes this in fine prose, with clearly drawn and engaging characters, a real sense of how people talk and act in conversation, and most importantly, with a deep sense of humanity and sympathy.

Beautifully written and translated. Author Sami Michael speaks with great intelligence and sensitivity about the multicultural state that Israel is and has been.

"A Trumpet..." offers some wonderful characters struggling to live normal lives, but hampered by the baggage of history, knee jerk ethnic animosity, gender restrictions and social status. Despite all of the obstacles to happiness, Michael's subjects endure and succeed in large measure in getting on with living. There is definitely some tragedy in this story, but the reader is given much to admire in the resolute strength of these characters. A lovely, if melancholy, book.

Israeli author Sami Michael's sharply conceived novel encompasses a wide range of moods as it focuses on the tensions between Arabs and Jews in the months leading up to the War in Lebanon in 1982. Set in the Arab quarter of Haifa, the story is told with a small cast of characters - an Arab Christian family, a Russian Jew who takes up residence in their apartment building, and a nosy downstairs neighbor. Two sisters of marriageable age are at the center of the narrative. One of them, Huda, is the narrator, reserved and shy, with a job at a travel agency. The other, Mary, is attractive, outspoken, passionate, and pursued by two very different men - the son of a local crime boss and a timid soul who can barely speak in her presence.

All the central characters are very much strangers in a strange land. The sisters' grandfather, a man of gentle wisdom, is a survivor of a plague that took the lives of his Coptic family when he was still a boy on the upper Nile in Egypt. Their mother has been separated from her family, her brothers exiled to Jordan in 1948. Alex, the Russian Jew has come to Israel for the sake of his ill and aging parents - victims of Party purges, and fiercely unhappy. He plays a trumpet to console himself and express the sorrows and confusion that come with the hard choices he has been forced to make.

I loved this novel. It demolishes the black-and-white assumptions and stereotypes that comprise conventional views of modern-day Israel. These are all people who exist in the gaps between adversaries. Where, it asks, do loyalties lie when wisdom and the heart draw people across the social boundaries that are supposed to keep them apart? This is a thoughtful, entertaining, and poignant novel that cries out for tolerance and understanding in a war-torn corner of the world.