The Gift Of Literature Is That, In

This Bloody Conflict Has Been Going On For Much Too Long. It Is Doing Terrible Things To Israelis, To Palestinians. One Of The Terrible Things It Is Causing Is Indifference.

In The Same Way In Which Music Is Made Of Notes And A Painting Is Made Of Lines Of Colors, The Matter Of Literature Are Words.

When I Say My Novels Are Set In Israel In The Last Seventy Years, This Entails The Fact That They Begin Hundreds Or Thousands Of Years Earlier In Time. And, Sometimes In Very, Very Different Places, Because We All Come From Somewhere, Especially Here In Israel.

Literature Exists Inside The Language. It's Made Of Words. It's Not Made Of Ideas And It's Not Made Of Concepts, Of Psychological Analysis. It's Made Of Words. In The Same Way In Which Music Is Made Of Notes And A Painting Is Made Of Lines Of Colors, The Matter Of Literature Are Words.

A Little More Than A Hundred Years Ago, "tel Aviv" Was Not A City. It Was A Title Of A Novel Written By An Author. The "return To Zion" Was A Name Of Another Novel. There Was A Bookshelf. There Was No Country. There Was No State. There Was No Nation. There Was No Physical Jewish Reality In This Country.