WHO BY FIRE

It may have been one of the greatest concert tours ever. It was certainly one of the strangest. In October, 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen - 39 years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end - traveled to the Sinai desert and inserted himself into the chaos and bloodshed of the Yom Kippur War.

Moving around the front with a guitar and a pick-up team of local musicians, Cohen dived headlong into the midst of a global crisis and met hundreds of fighting men and women at the worst moment of their lives.

His audiences heard him knowing it might be the last thing they heard, and those who survived never forgot what they heard. Cohen's war tour was an electric cultural moment, one that still echoes today, and one that inspired some of his greatest songs but a moment that only few knew about, until now.

In Who By Fire, Canadian-Israeli journalist Matti Friedman gives us a riveting account of what happened during those weeks in Israel in October, 1973. With access to amazing and never-before-seen material written by Cohen himself, along with dozens of interviews and rare photographs, Friedman revives this fraught and stunning time, presenting an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the artist, and of the young people who heard him sing in the midst of combat.

Who By Fire brings us close to one the greatest, most brilliant and charismatic voices of our times, and gives us a rare glimpse of war, faith, and belonging.

MATTI FRIEDMAN is a journalist and contributor to the New York Times Op-Ed Section. PUMPKINFLOWERS (2016) was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and as one of Amazon's 10 best books of the year. THE ALEPPO CODEX (2014) won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA's Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history. SPIES OF NO COUNTRY (2019), the received the 2018 Natan Book Award. He was born in Toronto and lives in Jerusalem with his family.