The
Almond Tree, a first novel by Michelle Cohen
Corasanti, starts with young Palestinian Ichmad Hamid watching his baby sister
Amal blown apart by an Israeli mine planted near his family’s farm. Despair
builds on despair as his father Abbas is jailed as a suspected terrorist
supporter, another sister is killed, and his brother, Abbas is crippled in a
vicious attack. When Ichmad, a brilliant mathematician, wins a scholarship to a
university where Arab students are in the minority, he encounters a Jewish
professor, a man filled with hate because of his own family’s persecution by
the Nazis. But, both men learn to respect each other as individuals, and in
their growing collaboration, despair slowly turns to hope.
The
Almond Tree traces Ichmad’s life from the squalor of
Palestinian refugee camps to the ivory halls of American universities, as he
and his new friend make advances in science, and, at the same time, develop as
individuals.
This is an amazing first novel; finely crafted, and
full of meaning. It’s easy to casually dismiss it. Some would doubt that a
Jewish writer could possibly enter into the mind of a Palestinian and make the
reader see the fear, hate, love, despair, and hope that shapes his mind. But,
Corasanti does just that. More importantly, she has capably described both
sides in this long-standing conflict from a human perspective, a perspective
that is all too often missing from other accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants
to have a better understanding of the human face of war.
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