Strangers with the Same Dream
It is the 1920s, and Jewish immigrants – the strangers with the same dream of the title – are trying to create and run settlements in the land which will eventually become Israel. One slight problem is that the land is already occupied – by the Arabs.
The suspicion, tentative reaching out, and ultimate conflict over land ownership are clearly shown. One of the central characters is David, nominal leader of this new group, but whose flaws are many and deep. The idealistic nature of the settlers is demonstrated through their attitude to property – clothes are washed and shared out on a first-come, first-served basis, for example. The opposite instinct is just as clear, however; one keeps back candlesticks, another keeps a red shirt. People are people. The difficulties of their dream are further complicated by kadachat (presumably malaria), infections from wounds, and lack of money, but they are driven by the understandable desire for a homeland, having fled from persecution and pogroms, even twenty years before the advent of the Nazi regime.
I had no idea that immigration and the attempt to set up Israel had begun so early, and the novel provided an interesting portrait of a people struggling to find a way of life and a place to be in hard times. Often, however, it was hard to care about the characters, as they were all dislikable for one reason or another, and having a dead person narrate parts of the novel is a difficult literary device. The author’s previous novel Far to Go was on the Man Booker longlist.
