Glimpses of a nation in crisis

How a trip to Israel inspired me to commit to dialogue.

A novelist I know recently went on tour in Europe. Nice work if you can get it, no? Except for one problem: some of the writers with whom he was supposed to appear withdrew from his events, resulting in their cancellation. (He’s an American Jew.)

One of those writers was Adania Shibli, whose novel Minor Detail many of you enjoyed reading a few months ag…