Book Description

Set in the 1980s, A Road from Damascus ventures behind daily news of the Middle East – images of killings, assassinations, bombings and faltering peace talks – to tell the story of ordinary Israelis & Palestinians caught up in the area’s political quagmire. The story of a Palestinian family and an Israeli family driven apart by the Arab-Israeli conflict emerges as a British diplomat attempts to reverse his dwindling career fortunes by exploiting his daughter’s friendship with an Australian archaeologist. The archaeologist’s friendship with an influential Palestinian businessman reveals the saga of the two families who for decades had been friends and neighbours in Jerusalem until Israel was founded in 1948. After decades apart, the separate ways of the families cross briefly and tragically. The encounter focuses attention on the elusiveness of truth in the Middle East. Despite the undoubted tragedy of the Arab-Israeli dispute, the novel captures the humour, irony and fatalism of the area and its people, whose resilience belies the seriousness of the conflict.

Extracts from Australian press reviews of the paperback edition:

`Balderstone’s novel is about people, land and displacement. It traces the lives of one-time Jerusalem friends and neighbours, the Palestinian Habeebs and the Jewish Avrahams as war, politics and ideology separate them, and then makes their paths cross again. Balderstone has the cadences and the speeches they enwrap just right…Above all he gets the people of the region right.’
– The Age

‘The novel charts the dissolution of friendships and families wrought by the Arab-Israeli conflict through the eyes of Mark Taylor, an Australian archaeologist and photo-journalist. What follows is a Levantine road movie with mixed motivations, some strangely bland, others extremely powerful…The author’s knowledge of the area’s history and politics is acute, and he takes great pain to provide a balanced view.’
– The Sydney Morning Herald

`The writing is crisp, well researched and economical without sacrificing style, and conveys an accurate picture of the region as it really is.’
– The Chronicle, Toowoomba

`Balderstone refreshingly steers clear of the polemical claims of both sides; his protagonist’s thoughts are critical and discerning.’
– Australia/Israel Review

`Balderstone is more than just an observant journalist…He runs his book at a brisk pace, incident after incident, person after person, seducing us into a story which has a minimal plot, but which we have to keep reading…He gets us involved with the people of his novel’
– The Catholic Weekly

‘A Road From Damascus is a valiant attempt to translate Arab/Israeli conflict into human terms.’
– The Bulletin

Buy this book from http://www.amazon.com/David-Balderstone/e/B0064I1QQE