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A Novel
by Jonathan Wilson
Based on actual events, a gripping novel of sex, love, and justice in the tinderbox of British Mandatory Palestine, by the acclaimed author of A Palestine Affair.
It's 1933, and Ivor Castle, Oxford-educated and Jewish, arrives in Palestine to take up a position as assistant to the defense counsel in the trial of the two men accused of murdering Haim Arlosoroff, a leader of the Jewish community in Palestine whose efforts to get Jews out of Hitler's Germany and into Palestine may have been controversial enough to get him killed.
While preparing for the trial, Ivor, an innocent to the politics of the case, falls into bed and deeply in love with Tsiona, a free-spirited artist who happened to sketch the accused men in a Jerusalem café on the night of the murder and may be a key witness. As Ivor learns the hard way about the violence simmering just beneath the surface of British colonial rule, Jonathan Wilson dazzles with his mastery of the sun-drenched landscape and the subtleties of the warring agendas among the Jews, Arabs, and British.
And as he travels between the crime scene in Tel Aviv and the mazelike streets of Jerusalem, between the mounting mysteries surrounding this notorious case and clandestine lovemaking in Tsiona's studio, Ivor must discover where his heart lies: whether he cares more for the law or the truth, whether he is more an Englishman or a Jew, and where and with whom he truly belongs.
BookBrowse Review
Initially, I was impressed with The Red Balcony which situates Palestine in the 1930s and relates an interesting legal drama based, apparently, on the real story of the murder of a man who, upon returning to Palestine after negotiating in Berlin with the German government for the release of a number of German Jews, becomes reviled as a collaborator and is shot. This is a fascinating setup: was he a collaborator for meeting with Nazi officials or was this a case of "by any means necessary" as he tried to get as many German Jews out of the country as he could? The resulting trial promises an intelligent plot and discussion with the arrival of our young Oxford-educated protagonist, Ivor Castle, from England to assist with the case, and we see the trial and the region through his eyes.
However, the moment that Ivor goes to interview a young artist named Tziona, who may have sketched the accused murderers in a cafe the evening of the shooting (and thus may provide them with an alibi), the novel begins to falter as Ivor turns into a moping, jealous, and obsessive man, and the legal drama takes a back seat to the somewhat predictable love story. Other characters and subplots are introduced but, for this reader it felt like too little too late, and by the time that I finished, I found that I cared very little about the outcome.
—Danielle McClellan
Other Reviews
"[A] smart, fast-paced novel...Wilson maintains the suspense of the trial's outcome until his atmospheric story's concluding pages, but there's much more to engage the reader before this mature work reaches its end. Morality and passion collide in a sophisticated legal thriller." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Wilson illuminates life in Palestine under the British Mandate in this engrossing legal drama ... Vivid atmosphere animates Wilson's story of expatriates, in the manner of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. With a mix of intrigue, romance, and 1930s realpolitik, the author immerses readers in Ivor's initial confusion and growing sense of moral clarity. Historical fiction fans are in for a treat." —Publishers Weekly
"Jonathan Wilson's beautifully paced Palestine novel kept me reading through the night. He knows his way intimately around this colony-as-crucible, a stony outpost of failing Empire teeming with Jews, Arabs, Brits who can be either and Brits who can be neither, High Commissioners, low criminals, artists, barristers, inspectors, and gendarmes, all of them trying to come to terms with Mandatory rule and the mandates of their own passions, which tend to get heated into history through politics and violence. The Red Balcony extends Wilson's previous novels set in the region, this time through the story of what is arguably Israel's foundational murder trial—a tale of multiple identities and loyalties that casts a shadow over the future State even while providing an eye-widening view of its author's bright and fully ripened achievement." —Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus
"Brimming with intrigue and atmosphere, The Red Balcony is a captivating mystery set amid the tensions of British mandate Palestine, where allegiances are always shifting and the shadow of history looms." —Tova Mirvis, author of The Book of Separation
"Jonathan Wilson is spectacularly witty and wise, deeply generous and intelligent, and his novel The Red Balcony is extraordinary. Intimate and epic, character-driven and a flat-out page-turner, the book manages to be a work of meticulously investigated historical fiction that never feels weighed down by its research; what's more, it is enviably prescient. In short, this is one of the best books I've read in years—I can't stop thinking about it. A gorgeous new novel by one of our very finest writers." —Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
This information about The Red Balcony was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jonathan Wilson is the author of eight previous books, including the novels The Hiding Room (a finalist for the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize) and A Palestine Affair (a New York Times Notable Book and National Jewish Book Award finalist); two short story collections, Schoom and An Ambulance Is on the Way; and the soccer memoir Kick and Run. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
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