Every year, thousands of migrating birds converge upon Israel. Their passage began before biblical times, and continues despite the changes in the contested land beneath them. It is an image reflected on the cover of this book: a multi-coloured crane, one wing the Communist flag, morphing into the Palestinian banner, with the final wing the colours of Israel. Could the three co-exist? They do in these pages.
The combination is contentious, perhaps why Sara Dowse took 25 years to write the book. Unlike her previous work it is not published by Penguin, rather a small press. Her last novels, from the 1990s, mention a projected biography, of an aunt who vanished in Stalin’s purges.
Clearly the work morphed into a family saga, a novel based on the lives of three women, two sisters and a niece, migrating from Russia to America and Palestine, later the state of Israel. Clara/Chava is an early Kibbutznik; her sister Manya/Marion a New York actress; and Zipporah (little bird) a Zionist militant.
Read the full book review by Lucy Sussex at the Sydney Morning Herald.