Book Review | Lihi Lapid's On Her Own

By Liam Hoare
Back in 2022, journalist and author Lihi Lapid signed what Haaretz described at the time as an ‘exceptional’... Read more > February 2026

Book Review | Etgar Keret's Autocorrect

By Liam Hoare
Etgar Keret’s new short story collection Autocorrect is the right book at the right time – though that,... Read more > September 2025

The Three Best Books by David Grossman, recommended by Liam Hoare

By Liam Hoare
Essayist and critic Liam Hoare suggests three books you have to read by Israeli novelist David Grossman. David... Read more > July 2024

David Grossman’s war

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare takes a look at how Israeli novelist David Grossman has responded to 7 October and the... Read more > May 2024

Book Review | Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon

By Liam Hoare
At the time of another episode in the Israel-Hamas conflict, Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Amos Oz opened... Read more > November 2023

Book Review | Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity

By Liam Hoare
On 28 September 1973, two Palestinian terrorists from the Syrian Ba’athist faction As-Sa'iqa hijacked a train near Marchegg... Read more > February 2023

Book Review | Victorious

By Liam Hoare
‘Unlike others, I am no longer slaughtering sacred cows,’ Amos Oz told Niva Lanir in a 2012 interview... Read more > February 2023

The Three Best Books by Israeli Writers (Not Called Oz, Grossman, or Yehoshua), recommended by Liam Hoare

By Liam Hoare
Fathom is inviting experts to select their three favourite books on a theme or subject. The series began... Read more > December 2022

‘Maybe he was the last of his kind’: A Conversation about Amos Oz with Nurith Gertz

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare talks to literary scholar Nurith Gertz about What Was Lost to Time (Hebrew), her biography of... Read more > October 2022

Book Review | The Wealthy: Chronicle of a Jewish Family (1763-1948)

By Liam Hoare
At the age of 40, having worked as a teacher and an official in the Israeli education ministry... Read more > July 2022

The Fourth Window, or the Wounds of Amos Oz

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare says The Fourth Window, a new documentary about Amos Oz by the Israeli filmmaker Yair Qedar,... Read more > November 2021

Book Review | More Than I Love My Life

By Liam Hoare
In October 1951, Rade Panić—who had fought for Josip Broz Tito’s partisans during the Second World War—committed suicide... Read more > September 2021

Rereadings | The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner

By Liam Hoare
‘The ultimate insider’s account’ wrote George Gruen on the release of Yehuda Avner’s book The Prime Ministers in... Read more > July 2021

Opinion | The UK and EU should recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — and Palestine

By Liam Hoare
In April 1949, what was then the New Statesman and Nation — at the time aligned with the... Read more > June 2021

Why you should read the two Israeli novels on the New York Times list of 100 notable books of 2020

By Liam Hoare
Two Israeli novels — The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid and The Tunnel by A.B. Yehoshua — made... Read more > February 2021

Book Review | Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making

By Liam Hoare
In 2013, the New York-based Israeli novelist Rudy Namdar published The Ruined House. Both upon its initial Hebrew... Read more > December 2020

Rereading Past Continuous: Revisiting Yaakov Shabtai’s ‘Revolution’ in Hebrew Prose

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare launches a new Fathom series in which our writers re-read classic texts. Past Continuous, Yaakov Shabtai’s... Read more > June 2020

Mandate 100 | ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: S. Yizhar's and Amos Oz’s Stories of Jewish Struggle in the British...

By Liam Hoare
S. Yizhar is often called the founding father of Israeli literature and Amos Oz was for many the... Read more > May 2020

Zeruya Shalev: On ‘Pain’ And Her Role As Israel’s Literary Therapist

By Liam Hoare
The translation of Zeruya Shalev’s 2015 novel Pain should be the moment she assumes ‘her rightful place in... Read more > November 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Nitzan Horowitz: The New Leader of the Israeli Left

By Liam Hoare
When Meretz, Ehud Barak’s Israel Democratic Party, and Labor’s Stav Shaffir created the Democratic Union, Nitzan Horowitz became... Read more > August 2019

In His Novels, And His Columns, Sayed Kashua Examines His Divided Self

By Liam Hoare
‘I wanted to say to my wife that this is really the end, it’s finished,’ the Arab-Israeli writer... Read more > May 2019

Amos Oz (1939-2018): Writer, Reader, Dreamer

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare writes in praise of Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist and public intellectual who died 28 December.... Read more > January 2019

David Grossman, the journalist

By Liam Hoare
Prizes have rained down on Israeli novelist David Grossman in recent years; the Israel Prize for literature in... Read more > october 2018

Israel70 | Amos Oz’s Israel

By Liam Hoare
While Amos Oz’s novels are often read reductively as political allegories, Liam Hoare suggests that Oz’s special subject... Read more > June 2018

Why is there no Museum of Contemporary Israeli History?

By Liam Hoare
Israeli museums, argues Liam Hoare, are a terrain of political struggle over history and memory. ‘Until these arguments... Read more > Winter 2017

Book Review | We Were the Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz

By Liam Hoare
Of all the aspects and institutions of kibbutz life, the children’s house is one that in particular continues... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | All the Rivers

By Liam Hoare
It is hard to know how to talk about Dorit Rabinyan’s third novel, All the Rivers, an elegant,... Read more > Summer 2017

1967 | Natan Alterman or Amos Oz? The Six-Day War and Israeli Literature

By Liam Hoare
Israeli writers were split by the Six-Day War. On one side was the poet Natan Alterman, whose Movement... Read more > Spring 2017

Book review | A Horse Walks Into a Bar

By Liam Hoare
A Horse Walks Into a Bar, an opening line to many a haggard joke, is not necessarily what... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review │ Judas

By Liam Hoare
Amos Oz was 14 when, two years after his mother took her own life, he left the city... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | The Hilltop

By Liam Hoare
The Hilltop is the first Israeli novel to chronicle the inner lives of the settlers that has been... Read more > Winter 2015

Finding the Words: a review essay

By Liam Hoare
Books under review: Falling Out of Time David Grossman, Jonathan Cape, 2014, pp.208; Neuland, Eshkol Nevo, Chatto &... Read more > Spring 2014

Book Review: Like Dreamers

By Liam Hoare
Israel, as Amos Oz once observed, was born out of a spectrum of dreams and visions, blueprints and... Read more > Winter 2014