HOME

HOME is the story of the Kibbutz, from its birth to its demise. This is the story of people who left their homes in order to come home.

They left their parents, their language and abandoned Mother Russia for the sake of establishing their own land. They tried to rid themselves of their yearning and attachment to their family, to privacy and to possessions, to create an ideal society, as they understood it. Some of them died before they saw the work of their life project fall apart. Some of them are still there.

In Inbari's intense and precise style, HOME limns a sweeping plot. Based on facts and research, he shapes the life story of the kibbutz through all its stages birth and regrowth, fractures and crashes, focusing on seven key figures in their loves, infighting, compassion, cruelty, power and pettiness. Along with the wonderful specifics of this particular story, Inbari has written about how freshness and commitment and ideology and solidarity get transmuted over time, and how events and personalities inevitably are distorting factors. Mortality, vulnerability and the interplay between the aspirational and the unexpected, all stalk this book.

HOME is an act of literary daring, freed from the barriers between literature and documentary, spinning an impressive and heartfelt creation of Israel's foundational history and culture, and giving it life, emotion, pathos and greatness.

ASSAF INBARI is an Israeli novelist and journalist. HOME was awarded the Israel Book Publishers Association's Platinum Prize and was on the shortlist of finalists for the Sapir Prize for Literature.