Omer Friedlander

People strive for connection in this debut work of fiction set in Israel and the Middle East: a magically rich collection of stories in the tradition of Michael Chabon, Nicole Krauss, and Nathan Englander. The poignant, whimsically imaginative stories in Omer Friedlander's debut transport readers to the narrow limestone alleyways of Jerusalem, the desolate beauty of the Negev Desert, and the sprawling orange groves of Jaffa. Across the sharply drawn borders that divide them, Friedlander's characters, often outsiders or even outcasts, are haunted by the past, or by the promise of a future that they can see but often cannot reach. A divorced con artist and his young daughter sell empty bottles of "holy" air to credulous tourists; a Lebanese Scheherazade enchants with her nightly tales the three young soldiers occupying a radio station in Beirut; a lonely young boy, obsessed with the bravery of a Polish-Jewish ballerina during the Holocaust, daringly "rooftops" at night, climbing steel cranes in his scuffed sneakers; an Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son, a soldier killed in Gaza. In The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, moments of fragile intimacy mix with comedy and notes of the absurd; these are fairy tales turned on their heads by the stakes of real life. These stories are the literary equivalent of Chagall's brushstrokes, offering enchantment as they take you somewhere far away yet achingly near, revealing the shared humanity that transcends physical, political, and religious boundaries, with a universal appeal to the heart.

Stories

The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land

Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land

The Miniaturist

'In these wise, capacious, achingly beautiful stories, Omer Friedlander maps the hidden geography of the human heart like a young Chekhov' ANTHONY MARRA 'A beautiful debut by a deeply humane writer. Every story is a vivid world unto itself, intensely felt, and often revelatory' NICOLE KRAUSS A divorced con-artist and his young daughter sell empty bottles of 'holy' air to credulous tourists. In a bombed-out Beirut radio station, a Lebanese Scheherazade enchants three young soldiers with her nightly tales. Ahead of a school 'Show and Tell', two brothers kidnap a Shoah survivor from a supermarket to pose as their grandfather. An Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son, a soldier killed in Gaza. From the limestone alleyways of Jerusalem to the desolate Negev Desert and the sprawling orange groves of Jaffa, Omer Friedlander's stories are fairy tales turned on their head by the stakes of real life, where moments of fragile intimacy mix with comedy and notes of the absurd. Casting his eye, not on the region's conflicts, but on the hopes and failures of its people, The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is at times darkly funny, at others quietly devastating.

Omer Friedlander

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