Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Summary and Reviews of Sadness Is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher

Sadness Is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher

Sadness Is a White Bird

by Moriel Rothman-Zecher
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 13, 2018, 288 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2019, 256 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

In this lyrical and searing debut novel written by a rising literary star and MacDowell Fellow, a young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country.

The story begins in an Israeli military jail, where - four days after his nineteenth birthday - Jonathan stares up at the fluorescent lights of his cell, and recalls the series of events that led him there.

Two years earlier: Moving back to Israel after several years in Pennsylvania, Jonathan is ready to fight to preserve and defend the Jewish state, which his grandfather - a Salonican Jew whose community was wiped out by the Nazis - helped establish. But he is also conflicted about the possibility of having to monitor the occupied Palestinian territories, a concern that grows deeper and more urgent when he meets Nimreen and Laith - the twin daughter and son of his mother's friend.

From that winter morning on, the three become inseparable: wandering the streets on weekends, piling onto buses toward new discoveries, laughing uncontrollably. They share joints on the beach, trading snippets of poems, intimate secrets, family histories, resentments, and dreams. But with his draft date rapidly approaching, Jonathan wrestles with the question of what it means to be proud of your heritage and loyal to your people, while also feeling love for those outside of your own tribal family. And then that fateful day arrives, the one that lands Jonathan in prison and changes his relationship with the twins forever.

Powerful, important, and timely, Sadness Is a White Bird explores one man's attempts to find a place for himself, discovering in the process a beautiful, against-the-odds love that flickers like a candle in the darkness of a never-ending conflict.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Much of Sadness is a White Bird is an exploration into cultural identity and how even newer generations of optimistic, progressive, humanistic youths are unable to shake off the historical shackles that pull them back into a never-ending cycle of conflict. Rothman-Zecher has an exquisite ability to vocalize the historical contexts that shape personal identity. Through shimmering prose and a pointedly intimate narrative, Rothman-Zecher has written a powerful, passionate but even-handed criticism of the ultimately futile Israeli-Palestinian conflict where both sides only stand to lose...continued

Full Review (744 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Dean Muscat).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies

Sadness is a White Bird's cryptic title is actually a direct quotation from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's 1967 poem, "A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies," which forms part of his collection The End of Night.

Did you feel sad? I asked.
Cutting me off, he said, Mahmoud, my friend,
sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield.
Soldiers commit a sin when they feel sad.

Indeed, much of Rothman-Zecher's novel takes inspiration from the imagery and themes within this seminal poem that stages a dialogue between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian narrator who shares the poet's name, Mahmoud.

Mahmoud Darwish Mahmoud Darwish, who passed away in 2008 after complications from open-heart surgery, is widely regarded as one of the ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Sadness Is a White Bird, try these:

  • Find Me jacket

    Find Me

    by Andre Aciman

    Published 2020

    About this book

    More by this author

    In this spellbinding exploration of the varieties of love, the author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name revisits its complex and beguiling characters decades after their first meeting.

  • City of Secrets jacket

    City of Secrets

    by Stewart O'Nan

    Published 2017

    About this book

    More by this author

    From master storyteller Stewart O'Nan, a timely moral thriller of the Jewish underground resistance in Jerusalem after the Second World War

We have 7 read-alikes for Sadness Is a White Bird, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Moriel Rothman-Zecher
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
    by Evie Woods
    From the million-copy bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

Who Said...

The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..