I’m not, in general, a big fan of thrillers. And I thought I knew enough about the Mideast—I’ve been to Israel frequently and have written about it, I speak Hebrew, and I have a sister who lives in Jerusalem—to pretty much know what I thought about the tragic nature of its situation. I was raised as a Zionist—my mother’s family fled Germany for what was then known as Palestine in 1936—and have remained one, although not without an ever growing sense of unease about Israel’s ongoing response to October 7, the continued hawkish and autocratic leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the complete collapse of the Israeli left.
All of which is to say that I picked up Lawrence Wright’s new novel, The Human Scale, set in the West Bank, not expecting to be particularly surprised or moved. I assumed, I guess, that it would be full of received wisdom and a bien-pensant view of the horrible Israelis and the defenseless Palestinians. In fact, I would wager that the disproportionate coverage this chronically besieged if geographically insignificant part of the world has received has not given most onlookers a clearer sense of what transpires over there and why; instead, I imagine readers’ eyes glazing over as they open the newspaper and find Gaza and Jerusalem in the headlines once again.
