The Land of the Pine and the Olive

16 hrs. 9 min.

Miscellaneous

Language Russian

Author Israel Shamir

Narrator Lora Luganskaya

Description

The first edition of this book, which became rare and cult-like, came out in 1987. Soon after publication, two processes began that changed Israel.
The Intifada erupted—Palestinian uprising against the apartheid regime. When the uprising couldn’t be suppressed, the authorities launched a “peace process,” which led to autonomy being created in a small part of the country’s territory, but failed to solve long-standing societal problems. The second edition was released during the days of a new flare-up of the Intifada—and one can predict with high likelihood: this is not the last outbreak of bloodshed on the Holy Land.
The second process was changes in Russia, which brought a million Russians to our shores. A powerful Russian community emerged; I gained a new reader to whom it is worth striving for. And a reader in Russia appeared too—someone ready to get to know, with an open mind, an unusual perspective.
I was tempted to rewrite the book anew, accounting for these factors. But like a person, a book has its own life, and such changes could have proved fatal. So here is the same book that readers loved at the end of the eighties—with only minimal revision. After all, the deep, fundamental problems and the charms of the Holy Land have changed little since then.