In British-occupied Palestine after World War One, a beleaguered London painter and his American wife witness the murder of an Orthodox Jew. She is drawn into an affair with the British investigating officer, while he seeks solace in painting. Each had come to Palestine to escape grief, and were forced to confront the political and personal issues they had left behind. A Palestine Affair was published in the USA by Pantheon/Anchor, a division of Random House in July 2004. Reviews of the American edition: "Wilson is a talented writer with a gift for story, scene and character." – The Boston Globe "A Palestine Affair is hard to put down. .. (it) echoes its modernist predecessors: Foster's A Passage to India, Conrad's The Secret Agent…"– San Francisco Chronicle "A story that tautens the sinuous strands of (the) period into a lethal knot."– New York Times Book Review "A swift little mystery-romance… Crisply written… Wonderfully rich in period detail and atmosphere…" – Seattle Weekly
"Worth reading? You bet it is!"
Saul Bellow
American reviewers have likened Jonathan Wilson's novel to works by EM Forster and Joseph Conrad... The setting is Palestine in 1924, under the British mandate...A Palestine Affair is rich in the odours of jasmine, lavender and eucalyptus; and in the sounds and colours of desert, souk and orange grove. Wilson - born in England, but now a US resident - portrays with an ironic sympathy characters who, like many of Greene's, are exiles in a dangerous place and subject to forces beyond their control or understanding.
Nicholas Clee
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