After reading about and participating in the discussion here on the young Israeli writer, Shani Boianjiu *, and her story, “Means of Suppressing Demonstrations,” I ordered an advance reading copy (ARC) of her forthcoming novel, The People of Forever are Not Afraid (pub. date Sept. 11). The good news is this book does not in any way, shape or form glorify the Israeli army, the State of Israel or the Israeli people. As hasbara, it has little value.
The novel is less about the army than the pre-publication publicity would lead one to believe, and more about the dark inner life and lurid misadventures of three young women coming of age in a land of violence and premature death. The menu here is dysfunctional personalities, sadism, and hard driving sex, pushing the limits of acceptability and taste. The girls’ victims are a hapless British-Jewish immigrant, an ineffectual long-time boyfriend, and in two separate instances, Palestinians. This is hardly something that is going to make the Birthright or Hadassah reading lists. Ironically, the most victimized characters in the book are the young women themselves, who are gang raped by a group of soldiers at an army base. The incident is described in a protracted, detached surrealistic manner which will surely surprise and baffle readers.
In an interview in The New Yorker, Boianjiu stated that Lea, a main character in her short story and novel, is not scarred by her experience in the army. This is perplexing, considering the following excerpt from the book, which shows Lea in post-army life engaging in bizarre anti-social behavior.
Boianjiu’s art aspires to pushing the boundaries of good taste. She has stated that her novel is not a criticism of the Israeli army (see Zancan interview cited below), but rather describes individuals, some good and some bad. The passage below should not be read as critical of Israeli society, and neither should the novel. My impression is that for this young author, like many, many Israelis and their supporters, no behavior, no matter how abominable, can ever indicate that there is something terribly wrong with Jewish Israeli society.
So, the passage below still begs the question: Did the young Israeli and her publisher go over the line of what is acceptable? I wonder how my Palestinian friends will react to this passage. Also, if the tormentors were more or less likeable Palestinians and the victim was a Jewish Israeli soldier, would Hogarth/Crown have published this description of the titillating effect of torture and revenge?
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In this passage, Lea is sleeping with her lover and employer, Ron. When Ron awakes he realizes that a Palestinian whom Lea believes to be Fadi, a man who killed a soldier at a checkpoint, is imprisoned in another bedroom. The prisoner has been burned by a blowtorch which Ron recognizes as the one that has been taken from his food kiosk:
And the man, of course. It was impossible not to notice the man. A middle-aged Arab man was in the room, on the floor, with his hands and legs cuffed. He was naked, and the skin on his back was burned. His face was a host of colors and bumps, yellow, red, blue. He looked up and opened his mouth. He was missing two bottom front teeth, so that one tooth stood alone, like a baby’s.
Nothing made sense: nothing seemed to match. Ron opened his mouth but no words came out. He felt her hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Lea said. “I saw him passed out drunk on a bench by the construction site under my building two days ago and I knew I recognized him. Fadi. So I took him. He killed a boy in my unit once. Cut his neck. Just reached in through his car and grabbed him by the collar and with the knife…”
… “It took me two hours to carry him up here. He was so drunk he didn’t even resist, but I was worried I was going to totally throw out my back,” Lea said. Her voice sounded sleepy. “He keeps on talking to me. On and on and on. You’d think he’d gather by this point I don’t understand a word of Arabic. I thought he’d stop talking after I knocked his teeth out, but he won’t.”
But wait, you do not think behavior like this from a nice Jewish girl is a big deal especially since it is just fiction? Check out the nice sexy Israeli boyfriend.
What did I do?” the man asked Ron. He looked at Ron as if he thought Ron had authority, as if he were a high-ranking Mossad agent who had finally come to do the right thing.
… [Then Ron] landed a blow on the back of the man’s neck. The man crumpled; his face smacked the floor. Ron couldn’t help but wonder if the blow had broken the torch, if it would ever work again.
He put his hand on the back of Lea’s neck, and she stepped closer and wet his chest, then began to kiss it, small kisses, like a child sipping soup.
… The morning was theirs.
This city is theirs.
And maybe everything is someone’s imagination.
Please, don’t judge. **
Please!
Don’t judge? How convenient!
You decide.
* See interview with Boianjiu at The [TK] Review by Caroline Zancan.
** Boianjiu, Shani, The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid (Advance Reading Copy), New York: Hograth, 2012, p.273-275.
thanks for the insight, ira. i won’t comment on the book as i’d prefer to read more of it before i do. in my opinion, though, not enough time is spent here and elsewhere analysing the influence of ‘art’ on politics. so much energy is spent debating the facts of a case, when you’re immersed in an ostensibly educated environment, you tend to forget how little the ‘facts’ matter to the larger body of public opinion.
ps ‘death and the maiden’. that’s what the passage reminded me of.
how sadistic. using a tortured man to wind the reader up for hot sex between torturers.
there’s something very sick about this, the desensitization is incredible sad.
It is sick, but in this case I can’t even begin to guess what the author’s intent is. It certainly doesn’t show the Israelis in a good light. The New Yorker story was hasbara-like, whatever the intent, but this little vignette, as Ira said, is certainly not the sort of thing you’d expect would be useful in a Birthright tour.
I’d have to read the whole thing to have an opinion and I might not have an opinion then. Sometimes novelists aren’t the best ones to go to for political or moral insight anyway.
What on earth has conscription into the occupation done to these people’s heads? Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel – all betraying similar signs of the psychoses of lawless, out of control militaries suffused with distorted and warped perceptions of people and the world. Traumatised, immature people with ideologically fuelled prejudices, ignorant of the wider world, and access to unlimited weaponry. A toxic brew, as apparently illustrated here.
Reminds me of the girl at Abu Ghraib – Lynndie England?
Pathetic.
As a librarian, Mr Glunts should have the means to inquire if German Nazi literature did produce comparable “fiction”. It’s possible of course, but even though I don’t read fiction I had the impression that the original Nazis drew the line somewhere and blocked this kind of reality show from their books.
Recontextualize this to the US: A female soldier, with a history of being sexually abused in her military tour of duty, picks up an elderly, drunken arab, psychotically mistaking him for someone who attacked a comrade. She takes him home – locks him in a room, abuses him with a blow torch, beatings and torture (knocking out his teeth). Obsessed, psychotic and fusing sex and agression, she uses the torture and the experience to sexually stimulate herself and her lover. This scenario would be diagnosed as sexual sadism in which the individual derives sexual excitement from the psychological and physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim. Given the magnitude of the pathology and the continuing and brutal assault (particularly the recurrent burning), reflected in this incident, in most countries, this individual would be committed to a hospital for the criminally insane, for example Atascadero or St. Elizabeth’s in the US. Annie, it’s far more than desensitization and you were correct in your diagnosis of “sick,” even if its fiction.
I think it does happen a lot. Friends who come back from Afghanistan are waaaaaay different than when they left.
Its not entirely there fault, because being in the military is very stressful and youre priorities get screwed up. Self preservation for you and your comrades comes in and values like mercy, empathy, and compassion are shelved.
I think shes very misguided in saying that the army didnt affect her or her character in a negative way- it obviously did. The fact that she writes about it shows she does think about these things seriously, and knowing as a female there is a high chance of someone committing sexual assault on you, from your own side, no less… that could also leave some cracks.
I havent read it, but Im speculating her views on it are more complicated than she is letting on, she doesnt want the bad press in Israel and in Jewish circles. You dont write about things like this if it doesnt bother you on some level. I think shes a coward more than a monster.
Rape in the US military: America’s dirty little secret
A female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire
link to guardian.co.uk
and, abierno, sticking with the literary aspects of this story, there seems to be an increasing interest in, or publication of at least, sadistic literature, and more particularly sadistic sexuality in widely consumed literature. i’ve paid more attention to this as my children read more widely. other literary ‘trends’ include the use of children as sacrifices in ritual, publicized violence, ‘the hunger games’, the normalization of rape as romance (the ‘twilight’ series) and the use of chidlren as intelligence agents, with trauma-induced training in espionage, assassination, or other of the intelligence arts, such as in NYT bestseller and award-winning ‘the mysterious benedict society’ (all of these ‘works’ being directed at the pre-teen/teen crowd.) see also ‘kick ass’, the most upsetting part of the film to some being a young girl’s use of the ‘c-word’, never mind the gory mass murder she takes part in to please ‘daddy’.
It is wrong to make a judgement without knowledge. However, the quoted passage shows no sign of literary ability, rather the ‘author’ appears to be doing little more than raising the lid of her soiled linen basket.
“… This is hardly something that is going to make the Birthright or Hadassah reading lists. ” (Ira)
My understanding of the tours is the very opposite. Sex sems to be an important aspect of them. Jewlicious had a “how to” guide for those interested in such things, especially when it comes to interacting with Israeli soldiers and soldierettes; Boianjiu’s book would have been a good addition:
link to jewlicious.com
yes, walid, that’s my impression too. and didn’t MW just have a post describing a woman’s laughable ‘birthright’ experience in some big f*ck tent, laid out in faux ‘arabian’ decor in the middle of the desert? this is part of the freudian/park avenue message, isn’t it, that sex sells, even slurpy, swollen, black-and-blue, blow torch sex.
If you want to make sure your book will sell, just fill it with plenty of sex, the more kinky the better it is, and people go apesh.t on it.
She is not out to get the Nobel Prize for literatur, she want to make money, money, money!! Recent bestseller in Europe, coming from England, the Many Shades of Grey, on the edge of being a porno book. People just eat it up.
i don’t have a problem with the exploration of s .. sss.. ..ssse… *clears throat* fornication in literature, but the linking of sexuality to sadism and degradation seems to be a disturbing popular trend.
ps that and the popular trend of ‘beautiful’ authors, ie. someone who can be made to look ‘sexy’ on the book jacket or on oprah. the author here seems to fit that bill. this award calculus seems more accurate: ’5 promising authors under 35 who can fit into a size 2′.
50 shades of awful does not have kinky sex in it- it has pretty unrealistic sex in it.
“Jews get STDs too”
what was the previous mindset that Jew/Jew mating somehow protected you from STDS. Or was it, the Jews didn’t know STDs until they started dating non Jews, so dont pollute our Jewish utopia with your diaspora diseases.
ETA- I kept reading and the article just gets more and more racist.
What I wonder is how much of all this actually happened? Her story for the New Yorker was a thinly disguised account of real events. Based on the fairness and objectivity she displayed in that story, I can count on her to judge people like the man they tortured fairly. I am not surprised she doesn’t dwell on torture in her novel; it would not paint a pretty picture. Her behavior makes me think of the Americans of 150 years ago who lived their lives as though slavery was normal.
What are the “people of forever” supposed to be afraid of? It sounds like the “people of forever” are victims in this novel.
What I wonder is how much of all this actually happened?
in one of the sites i read a review last night (LA book review i think) the book was classified as ‘literary fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’. for what’s it’s worth.
I think this category means “fictionalized accounts of real events”.
I think we are used to reading books or watching movies in which we dismiss the carnage is escapist fantasy, but in this case the atrocities may have been real. Her line justifying the torture, “He killed a boy in my unit once”, reminds me of her defense of the IDF in the New Yorker story, in which Palestinians seek to be shot for publicity. Why are most Palestinians tortured by the IDF?
Just another psycho porno trash novel without a point. You wonder though why the NewYorker even gave it a review. Wouldn’t waste money on it.
The best fiction today is written by Swedish writers like Mankell and Norwegians who have a knack for incorporating international conflicts or issues without making it seem they enjoy mucking around it, and without trying to make sense of the dark side, which no one can, still let justice come out on top in the end.
Never could get into Jewish writers like Roth and Bellow because it’s all dark and bitter and angst and irony without any real redemption in the story.
The best fiction today is written by Swedish writers like Mankell and Norwegians ….
haven’t read any scandy lit yet, american. i’m still partial to 19th early 20th century lit, and the spanish for the newer stuff, like cesar aira or roberto bolano.
I got turned onto the Swedish and Norwegians fiction (semi) by a friend who brought a stack of them to the beach for lite reading.
Mankell and Nebos are now my two favorites for fiction. Always tied to some real international issue but in which the how the characters relate to it is the fictional part. Character studies.
nebos is the snowman author, right? i’ll see what’s at the local library. i love good fiction, but i have to force myself to read it since it’s not ‘productive’.
And the title written in blood red, just to make things crystal clear.
We sleep safely at night because The People of Forever stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.
Can someone here take a hit for the team and read this and let everyone know whether it has any redeeming value?
i’ll read it (although i make no claims to objectivity) if i can get a library copy.
if i can get a library copy.
good point–paying money for that book would be violating BDS.