Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation

Written by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman

Narrated by Fred Sanders and Gabra Zackman

A groundbreaking collection of essays by celebrated international writers bears witness to the human cost of fifty years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

In Kingdom of Olives and Ash, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, two of today's most renowned novelists and essayists, have teamed up with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence—an organization comprised of former Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories and saw firsthand the injustice there—and a host of illustrious writers to tell the stories of the people on the ground in the contested territories.

Kingdom of Olives and Ash includes contributions from several of today’s most esteemed storytellers including: Colum McCann, Jacqueline Woodson, Colm Toibin, Geraldine Brooks, Dave Eggers, Hari Kunzru, Raja Shehadeh, Mario Vargas Llosa and Assaf Gavron, as well as from editors Chabon and Waldman. Through these incisive, perceptive, and poignant essays, readers will gain unique insight into the narratives behind the litany of grim destruction broadcasted nightly on the news, as well as deeper understanding of the conflict as experienced by the people who live in the occupied territories. Together, these stories stand witness to the human cost of the occupation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: May 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9780062675156

Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.

Reviews for Kingdom of Olives and Ash

[asxz-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Predictably uneven collection of essays. I went to the Jerusalem book launch for this a few weeks ago and found myself in the audience at the Q&A yelling at Michael Chabon, one of my favourite authors and his wife. Not my finest hour. Now that I have read all the essays in this collection, I'm still a bit conflicted about the potential impact of this project. Saying that the Occupation is bad seems as redundant as saying that Trump's Presidency is bad. No one intelligent is going to argue with you. If anything some of the essays here are a little too even-handed because if the soldiers who maintain the occupation are partly victims too, then what exactly are the authors confronting? There's also a fair amount of repetition which I guess is to be expected given that some of these writers traveled together, but there are also some gems here including Assaf Gavron's piece about football and Colum McCann moving story about Combatants for peace. I went into this concerned that it might be a fruitless exercise and finished it finding it mostly toothless.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Various writers on Israel’s Occupied Territories.The writers are generally very talented, which makes the topic harder and easier to bear; they convey the pain of living under occupation, the arbitrary actions of others that control your life and make time unpredictable and endless, the way that Israel is trying to squeeze Palestinians out of the territories by squashing economic and other forms of development.