By Runo Isaksen
Interlink Pub Group (2008) www.interlinkbooks.com
$18.00; 222 pp.; ISBN-10: 1566567300
(Reviewed by G. David, phati’tude Literary Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3)

WHILE AMERICAN LITERATURE COVERS an abundance of ethnic literatures and a myriad of social and political issues, the unifying factor is the English language. On the other hand, Israeli literature is a bit more complex; while the literature is unified by religion, works classed as Israeli literature are written in five languages; with Hebrew as the dominant language, some Israeli authors write in Yiddish, English, Arabic and Russian.

But that’s not all. Political and social scenarios are vast, ranging from Zionism (which has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland), to religious viewpoints as vast as “secular”(where a person’s Jewish identity is largely independent of traditional religious belief and practice) or of those individuals who follow an orthodoxy religion. To add to the mix, Israeli writers are of different backgrounds: Ashkenazi (Jews primarily from European countries); Sephardic (Arab Jews, also known as “Mizrahi,” who come from the Iberian Peninsula, African and Middle Eastern countries); and Muslim and Christian Arabs who live in Israel, whose work is often classed as “Palestinian” literature along with Palestinian writers, an affiliation that is national rather than territorial.

So it is in this context that Norwegian writer Runo Isaksen sets out to investigate the inner-workings of these writers in Literature and War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers, an illuminating collection of interviews of novelists and poets, which he conducted in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in 2002 and 2003.

Editor Isaksen is a Norwegian novelist, active in Norwegian writers’ groups, who became increasingly curious about whether literature can bridge the divide between peoples at war. A founding member of Israel’s Peace Now movement in 1977, Isaksen has been a political player for decades, giving him a firm grounding in the conflict and its literary legacy.  Norway’s active role in sponsoring Arab-Israeli negotiations and support for Palestinian cultural institutions inspired him to consider the political and social roles of writers. One example of this socio-political power on the part of writers is Isaksen’s belief that connections between black and white writers helped end apartheid in South Africa.  The key question that Isaksen poses in each interview is whether literature can play a role in helping one side see the other.

The book consists of 14 interviews with writers including Israel writers Etgar Keret, David Grossman (“The Yellow Wind”), Orly Castel-Bloom and Amos Oz (perhaps Israel’s most famous writer); and Palestinian writers Yahya Yakhlif, Mahmoud Shuqair, Sahar Khalifeh and Liana Badr. Isaksen, who conducts these interviews in the writers’ homes or in the cafes of Tel Aviv and Ramallah, examines the obligation artists feel (or don’t feel) to help bring peace to the region, the differences between being an Israeli and being a Jew, the likelihood of true democracy in Israel, the meaning of exile and statehood in the minds of Palestinians as well as other weighty topics.

Isaksen’s idealistic notion doesn’t quite succeed.  First, comparing South Africa to Israel is like comparing apples and oranges. Israel’s situation is far more complex than South Africa’s, especially when you factor in religion, ethnic and nationalist strife compounded by an ongoing war.  In other words, too many issues exist between the Israelis and Palestinians and it cannot be cured with a stroke of a pen.  On one point the writers agree: a true cultural exchange will have no effect until a political solution has been reached and the bombings have stopped. In a sense, what these interviews do confirm is how far each cultural community has to go before truly understanding or even engaging the other in a meaningful way.

This doesn’t mean that Isaksen’s book is not worthy of a read, in fact it’s absolutely riveting.  Isaksen let’s the writers speak for themselves, and in doing so, they reveal how their narrative is complicated by problems of religious beliefs, nationalism, war, terrorism and military occupation; how it frames their subjectivity, with each side staking a claim to a certain way of being and belonging to a land they co-inhabit.

Perhaps the most interesting points raised in Literature and War is when the writers assess their own cultures, providing insight into a touchy subject that is rarely visible to the general public.  The interviews are illuminating in many other ways too.  Arab writers, on both the Israeli and Palestinian side, point to how the minority Jewish population from Europe, with the legacy of the Holocaust defining their understanding of themselves, dominates Israeli culture. Jewish and non-Jewish Arabs, who make up the majority of Israelis, complain that their own diverse cultural heritage has been systematically marginalized. The Palestinians complain that Israel has no interest in Arabic translations, and the Israelis complain that the Arabs have no interest in Hebrew translations.  Isaksen, who is fascinated with the efficacy of Arabic modernism in a culture where these taboos severely restrict artistic freedom, further probes and asks each Palestinian whether sex, religion and politics are Arabic taboos in literature.  They all concur that social taboos are a problem and that they must find ways to address certain issues subtly.

Isaksen divides the book evenly between Israeli and Palestinian authors. The section on Israeli authors is considerably stronger and more reflective of the diversity of opinion in Israel.  The Palestinian section is less revealing, because physical access to the writers themselves was challenging, whether it was the difficulty of getting into Gaza, or the fact that a number of Palestinian writers split their time between Palestine and Europe and were out of town.

Overall, Literature and War presents an honest and candid dialogue with writers of different ages, genders, and styles, linked by a common experience of life in a culture under siege. These writers also share a number of sharp insights into the process, promise and limits of art in the face of war.  Isaksen may not have determined if either side can know the other through literature, but in Literature and War he has succeeded in interviewing some of the more eloquent observers of the interminable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These dialogues — urgent, humorous, despairing and hopeful — are themselves a first step toward peace.

RUNO ISAKSEN lives in Bergen, Norway. He has a Master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Norway, and has published four novels about modern Norwegian life, and has worked as a freelance journalist for several newspapers and magazines. Isaksen works for The Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU) is a public Norwegian agency that promotes international cooperation in education and research.

Print PDF