Ashes and Other Stories

the long version

"The title-story, 'Ashes', explores - with biting black humour - the problems of cremating a dead friend, according to his last wishes, in a country where all corpses have to be buried. The potential solutions border on the macabre until a compromise is reached." "'No Problems' reveals the tensions between different generations of a Jewish Israeli family when a Palestinian comes to work for them as an odd-job man. Abu Abed's presence unwittingly reveals the chasm between intentions and reality when liberal Jews employ dispossessed Arabs. The story can be read as an analogy of the larger relationship between Jew and Arab in Israel, between occupier and occupied." "In 'The Battle for Rafi' a school teacher is enlisted to give psychological support to parents of young soldiers taken prisoner by the Syrians after the 1973 war. When Rafi's father recognises him on rough film footage, but his mother doesn't, the teacher realises there is more than mere disagreement at stake here." "'Intimacy' describes the difficulties of concealing an adulterous love affair in a tiny, crowded country where gossips and searchlights probe every corner." "'The House on the Frontier' tells the story of Laszlo, a Hungarian survivor of the European labour camps, who becomes the self-appointed defender of a house which stands between Jerusalem and the West Bank just before the Six Day War. Laszlo is caught in a cross-fire not of bullets, but of music, between the Arab guard across the border and the young Israeli student living in the house beneath him. The story subtly reveals the disdain of young Israelis both for new immigrants and for their Arab neighbours."--BOOK JACKET.