Amazon.com
Former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres combines history, memoir, and fiction in an "imaginary voyage" through 20th-century Israel with the 19th-century founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl. "Only the narrow-minded and unimaginative will find this premise off-putting or surprising," Peres explains. "Everyone else has long known that in our country the impossible is a way of life." This make-believe tour includes a brief description of the Holocaust for a man who initially would have disbelieved it, plus vignettes of life in the Jewish nation-state ("I had no idea whether Herzl would appreciate the pleasure of today's Tel Aviv nightlife. I had a hard time picturing him dancing to some disc jockey's rock 'n' roll, or taking part in a rave on one of the converted docks at Jaffa"). Peres also uses Herzl as a tool for projecting some of his own views on contemporary Israeli politics: "[Herzl] sternly disapproved of the role religious parties play in governing Israel today.... I am concerned about the growing schism between the religious and the secular factions in Israel. The former, to be quite honest, have proven themselves far more vindictive than the latter. If we are not careful, this latent conflict could divide Israel and Israeli society, and encourage intolerance and discourage progress." The Imaginary Voyage is a quickly read tale full of charming idiosyncrasies and edgy political observations. --John J. Miller
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From Publishers Weekly
Some of the same qualities for which he has been criticized throughout his long career as a statesman and politician make Peres an enjoyable writer: erudition (and a tendency to show it off), a taste for whimsy and a romantic streak. Peres, co-winner with Yitzak Rabin and Yasir Arafat of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, takes the reader on an imaginary journey around present-day Israel with Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the father of modern Zionism. The imaginary Herzl proves a good foil to whom Peres explains concisely how Israel has evolved in so many ways: from a desert to an agricultural miracle; from an agricultural economy to a high-tech one; from a nation remarkably unified in spirit to one rent by factional discord. As befits a man who was twice prime minister and many times a member of Israel's cabinet, Peres demonstrates pride in what Israel has created and satisfaction in his own rise from Russian immigrant in 1923 to one of the country's elder statesmen. To his credit, however, Peres doesn't rely on a "what-miracles-has-the-state-produced" approach. He expresses, for example, his dismay with the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud block defeated Peres's Labor Party in 1996. Part history, part autobiography and part patriotic romance, Peres's idiosyncratic tour of Israel and its history is more loving than it is thorough. But his love is not directed at a Jewish utopia but rather at a real state with all its real-world imperfections and perils.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
