When I Lived in Modern Times [Hardcover]

Linda Grant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2001

A number-one bestseller in London and the winner of Britain's prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction, When I Lived in Modern Times is one woman's story of discovery-of herself, of her heritage, and of the nation that would one day become Israel.

It is April 1946. For a weary and exhausted Europe, it's a time to begin picking up the pieces of the past, and for the armies of displaced persons on the move to slowly return home-if they still have one. But for Evelyn Sert, a twenty-year-old woman from London standing on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine, it is a time of adventure and a time of change when anything seems possible.

Landing on the shores of a nation fighting to be born, Evelyn is quickly caught up in the spirited, chaotic churning of her new, strange country. Unsure of herself and where she belongs in this world whose only constant is change, she will become Eve and work in the unbearable heat of a kibbutz. As Evelyn, she will find a home, and a collection of friends as eccentric and disparate as the teeming metropolis of Tel Aviv itself. And as Priscilla, she will find love with a man who is not what he seems to be, as she is swept up as an unwitting spy in an underground army that is beyond anything she's ever imagined.

A coming-of-age story unlike any other, When I Lived in Modern Times illuminates a page of Twentieth century history that is at once exotic and familiar through the eyes of one of the most unforgettable heroines in contemporary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In April 1946, a 20-year-old East End London hairdresser named Evelyn Sert sets out for Palestine. "This is my story," she writes in When I Lived in Modern Times, which won Linda Grant the 2000 Orange Prize. "Scratch a Jew and you've got a story." Her account is no less complicated than that of any other displaced European Jew in the postwar years. Separated from her family, she searches for some kind of reliable identity in an inhospitable new land--and in shining, Bauhaus-influenced Tel Aviv, she finds that she is more English than Israeli. Lo and behold, she becomes Priscilla Jones, a peroxided Londoner with an absent policeman husband. She is at her most "real," it seems, when pretending, and revels in her ability to be entirely accepted among the English women whose hair she cuts and curls. Outside of their petty and casually anti-Semitic circle, meanwhile, she struggles with Hebrew, the heat, the unfamiliar food, and an alien way of life.

In Palestine, of course, the English are the enemy. Evelyn is soon drawn into a world of shifting identities, lies, and secrets by her passionate Zionist boyfriend, Johnny. Even then, she is never quite sure which side she is on, or where she belongs. All of this makes her a prototypical inhabitant of Linda Grant's Tel Aviv, a city of contradictions and of hope. More to the point, Grant's heroine is a fully believable figure, a chameleon of a kind readily recognizable to those of us who grew up as part of the seismic displacement of peoples that accompanied World War II--and, alas, to anyone who has been caught up in the more recent exoduses from Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania. --Lisa Jardine

From Publishers Weekly

An unsentimental, iconoclastic coming-of-age story of both a countryDIsraelDand a young immigrant, Grant's first novel introduces an unusually appealing heroine, narrator Evelyn Sert, and provides an unforgettable glimpse of a time and place rarely observed from an unsparing point of view. Na ve and idealistic, 20-year-old Evelyn, an incipient Zionist, leaves London for Palestine in April 1946 under false pretenses. Devoid of useful skills, she barely survives a stint on a kibbutz. Later, in Tel Aviv, she gets a job in a hairdressing salon, passing herself off as Priscilla Jones, the wife of a British soldier. To her neighbors she acknowledges that she's a Jew, but she's puzzled that she has more in common with the British colonials than with the motley collection of Jews from many lands and widely disparate religious, social and economic backgrounds, all of them busy reinventing themselves. After falling in love with a chameleon-like man she knows as Johnny, who impersonates a British army officer, she's not really surprised to find that he's a terrorist with the Irgun underground, working cold-bloodedly to end the British Mandate. Unwittingly, Evelyn gives Johnny information that results in violence. The quiet force of this astonishingly mature novel comes in watching Evelyn's simplistic worldview gradually give way to disillusionment as she becomes aware of the moral ambiguities and paradoxes on all sides. Readers will be struck by the timeliness of Grant's narrative, for she captures the excitement and danger of a volatile society and the desperate measures of a homeless people convinced that they must create a state. The implications of this cautionary tale keep unfolding even after the bittersweet denouement. It's no wonder that this novel won the 2000 Orange Prize, beating out Zadie Smith's White Teeth. (Feb.) Forecast: The stark facts revealed in Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete (Nonfiction Forecasts, Oct. 23) acquire a human face and a compelling voice in this fictional evocation of the period. The novel's relevance to current events provides a natural handle for booksellers, and Hollywood may see the potential in a story whose ramifications are reflected in today's headlines.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (January 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525945946
• ISBN-13: 978-0525945949
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,788,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984.

Her first book, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution was published in 1993. Her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, published in 1996, won the David Higham First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Remind Me Who I am Again, an account of her mother's decline into dementia and the role that memory plays in creating family history, was published in 1998 and won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year award and the Age Concern Book of the Year award. Her second novel, When I Lived in Modern Times, set in Tel Aviv in the last years of the British Mandate, published in March 2000, won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize and the Encore Prize. Her novel, Still Here, published in 2002, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her non-fiction work, The People On The Street: A Writer's View of Israel, published in 2006, won the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage. Her Booker Prize shortlisted novel, The Clothes On Their Backs, was published in February 2008. Linda's most recent book, The Thoughful Dresser was published in March 2009.

She has written a radio play, Paul and Yolande, which was broadcast on Radio 4 in October 2006, and a short story, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, part of a week of stories by Liverpool writers commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Beatles, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, broadcast in July 2007.

She has also contributed to various collections of essays. Her work is translated into French, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Czech, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Chinese.




Awards

The Clothes On Their Backs Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008
Winner South Bank Show Award

The People on the Street:
A Writer's View of Israel Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage

When I Lived in Modern Times Winner, Orange Prize for Fiction 2000
Shorlisted: Jewish Quarterly Prize
Encore Prize


Remind Me Who I Am, Again Mind Book of the Year 1999
Age Concern Book of the Year 1999


The Cast Iron Shore David Higham First Novel Prize
Shortlisted Guardian Fiction Prize

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A refreshing literary achievement!, March 4, 2001

By 

Lynn Adler - See all my reviews

This review is from: When I Lived in Modern Times (Hardcover)

Idealism and disillusionment, the collisions of past and future are recurrent themes in this novel set in 1946 and 1947 Palestine, where identity is a haphazard commodity. The narrator who chronicles what she calls living history is 20-year-old Evelyn Sert, sometimes called Eve, sometimes Mrs. Priscilla Jones. Unlike many tales of Jewish refugees reclaiming their homeland, Evelyn is not a refugee, but she is a displaced person of sorts. It is right after the war and Evelyn and her mother have survived the long years of the London blitz and rationing.

Growing up in England, the daughter of a woman who has cut ties from her own immigrant family and a shadowy American father only glimpsed through one old photograph, Evelyn is always reminded that she is second class, and the only thing that fiercely endures is her Jewish identity. When her mother dies an early death, her mother's lover, "Uncle Joe", who has fed and clothed them all these years, and fed Evelyn as well on Zionism, encourages her to go to Palestine, and basically pays her off to do so. One senses that it is not entirely out of conviction but a convenient way to get Evelyn out of the way of his real family.

A frustrated artist, she goes to work at the only way she knows how to make a real living, as a hairdresser. In her hairdresser's capacity, she is recruited for mundane underground assignments by the mysterious sexy "Johnny", who becomes her lover. Eventually caught out by the British and forced to leave the country, Evelyn's idealistic dream disintegrates, and that is the tie-in to the book's title, but it does not end there. A mature and wizened Evelyn returns to Israel to live out her twilight years.

The great thing about this story and its strength will probably also cause offense to those expecting heroic characters and lofty moral platitudes. This is an unsentimental description and examination of life under the British Mandate. It is not always a pretty or hopeful picture, although not completely dim. The Jewish characters and the British are equally put under a harsh spotlight. As each tells his or her story, argues over the old and the new world order, and prediction of what will happen when the British leave (the only thing that all parties agree will happen), a picture of a society and a people in transition emerges. The author's research has been done with care and I believe that we get an honest and accurate portrayal.

Finally, this is as much a story about the building of Tel Aviv as it is about the State of Israel. Not surprisingly, it is this city and not Jerusalem that captures Evelyn's imagination. The young shining Tel Aviv, not only stands as a nostalgic historical and cultural remembrance, but also as a fitting metaphor for the modern Jewish city and therefore a new definition of the Jewish people.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jewish state of mind : a truly awesome read, December 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: When I Lived in Modern Times (Hardcover)

Linda Grant's "When I Lived In Modern Times (WILIMT)" is not a political treatise on the epoch making event of the creation of the Jewish nation state of Israel but it captures perfectly the sense of excitement and urgent anticipation that gripped the hearts and minds of the Jewish diaspora when they saw and seized the occasion that presented itself after the Second World War. Evelyn Sert (aka Priscilla Jones) suffers an identity crisis whilst living unhappily in England. She is torn between her Englishness and her own ethnicity, so when she decides to pack her bags for Tel Aviv to make her small contribution to the Cause, she comes face to face with an uncomfortable life in a kibbutz before finally emerging in Tel Aviv, where she works as a hairdresser. It is through her surprising encounters with characters as varied and diverse as Meier, Blum, Mrs Lintz, Mackintosh and her lover Johnny - most of them leftovers from the recent historical past - that we enter the minds of the various ethnic communities (including the colonial English), some declining, others rising, but all experiencing a deep turbulence in their consciousness. Just as the English weren't shedding their colonial mentality or adjusting to their declining influence on the world stage quite so quickly enough, the German Jews who had survived the Nazi era weren't ready to shed their prejudices about the Arabs and so forth. But Grant isn't out to make a political statement. Her aim is to entertain, so what she has in store for us is an adventure story, with all the ingredients of political intrigue, spying and kidnapping, etc, as we follow Evelyn in her narrow escapades and search for her own soul and identity in her burgeoning fatherland. She tastes the complexity of it and emerges the wiser and ready to give counsel to her daughter, Naomi, who asks the same questions. Grant may have made her name as a journalist but she has proven herself to be equally adept as a novelist. She has written a keenly observed, deeply relevant and highly impressive novel that will stand the test of time. It should also make compelling reading for those like me who are keen to fill the gap in their knowledge of how it was for the Jews who built Israel. WILIMT richly deserved the Orange Prize in 2000. Read it.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read, March 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: When I Lived in Modern Times (Hardcover)

Linda Grants' story was captivating. It reminded much of my own experiences of living as an immigrant in Tel Aviv. I learned a great deal from her story about the early immigrants to the city and their unique characters and ways of behavior. The story follows a young English women who leaves England for Palestine in the years before the establishment of the State of Israel. One learns of the kibbutz experience and its hardships, of the difficulties of adjusting to life in a new country with its different cultures and norms. The descriptions of the British and the many different immigrant groups in Tel Aviv were insightful. As someone who has lived in Tel Aviv many of Linda Grants' descriptions run true to this day. This is book worth reading. As a side note Ms. Grant recommends a book on Tel Aviv by J. Schlor which I recently purchased which is fantastic. It offers historical insights into the creation of the city of Tel Aviv