This was a free book through Amazon Prime's First list. Romance is not my usual genre but having lived in the middle east as a child I enjoy historical fiction about this war torn area of the world. I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the war between Arabs and Jews in Israel/Jordan. The author uses many different voices and points of view and makes you feel the love and hate, heartache and loss throughout. Her words paint a beautiful portrait of the area and I almost felt as though I was walking through the sand and desert ruins while enjoying this book.
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„In den vergangenen Monaten hatte ihre unglaubliche Liebesgeschichte auf einem Fundament der Gewissheiten geruht: Sie wussten, dass unter ihnen die Erde und über ihnen der Himmel war – und alles andere in ihrer Hand lag.“ (Zitat Seite 103)

Inhalt
1947 lernen sie sich zufällig auf einem Empfang anlässlich einer Parade zu Ehren von King George VI kennen. Lila Cassuto ist eine junge, unabhängige Frau, arbeitet als Maniküre. Elias Riani ist ein junger, vermögender Teehändler. Doch ihrer Liebe bleibt nicht viel Zeit, denn die Jüdin Lila wohnt im Westteil von Jerusalem, der Araber Elias im Ostteil. Am 29. November 1947 wird die Teilung Palästinas beschlossen, der Staat Israel entsteht. Die Mauer, die bald darauf Jerusalem teilt, wird zu einem unüberbrückbaren Hindernis und trennt Lila und Elias für neunzehn Jahre. Sie vergessen einander nicht, doch ihr Leben entwickelt sich völlig unterschiedlich. Kann es einen Neubeginn geben?

Thema und Genre
In Roman geht es um die Problematik der Staaten Palästina und Israel, die geteilte Stadt Jerusalem, Politik, Kriege, Religion, vor allem aber um Familie und Liebe.

Charaktere
Lila ist eine engagierte, unabhängige Frau. Sie kann Elias nicht vergessen und hofft, ihn eines Tages wiederzusehen. Elias wählt seinen eigenen Weg, resigniert beugt er sich den Wünschen seiner Eltern. Nomi ist die Tochter von Lilas Freundin Margo, doch zu Hause wird das an allem interessierte Mädchen von allen übersehen, sie schließt sich Lila an und lernt später auch Elias kennen.

Handlung und Schreibstil
Die Geschichte findet auf zwei Zeitebenen statt und wird abwechselnd erzählt. Der erste Erzählstrang spielt in der aktuellen Zeit, im Jahr 2006, der zweite Erzählstrang umfasst die Ereignisse in den Jahren 1947 bis 1967. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Liebe zwischen einem Araber und einer Jüdin, das unterschiedliche Lebensumfeld und das weitere Schicksal. Die Teilung Palästinas in einen jüdischen und einen arabischen Staat bleiben Hintergrundthemen, wie auch die damit verbundenen Probleme und Kriege. Ich hatte etwas mehr Zeitgeschichte und weniger romantische Liebe erwartet. Die Sprache ist poetisch, leicht zu lesen und passt zum Genre.

Fazit
Ein romantischer Liebesroman, in dessen Mittelpunkt eine Jüdin und ein Araber stehen und ihre Liebe in Israel, in der durch eine Mauer geteilten Stadt Jerusalem. ( )

This is a super sad love story in my opinion. It makes you have lots of feelings, but it's mostly feeling sorry for the couple. They are in love, but Israel is split into Jewish and Arab sections. Then, it's at war. Their not being allowed together goes on for years and years and years. How terrible to live where you aren't allowed to be with the one you love. The storyline goes from current to past. In the current, the man is in the hospital possibly dying, and the woman is dead. It goes back to all they went through. Insert cry emoji. It's a good story. It made me think. ( )

Love story set in Jerusalem from 1947-2006 between Jewish woman and Arab man. Through 19 years of living in separate sides of the city their live did not falter. Some historical background during the times of the novel but not nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity. Well written about thoughts of characters. ( )

I just couldn't really manage to get interested in this story about the secret romance between a Palestinian man and a Turkish Jew in Jerusalem. It's very slow, and the story seems to meander a lot. The height of Elias and Lila's romance really happens early in the book, and then everything after that is about how hard their lives are, and how they can't even see each other for 19 years between 1948 and 1967. If anything, I found the character of Nomi a bit more interesting, and how she came from an utterly dysfunctional family to a (seemingly) rewarding career trying to place kids from the foster system with sympathetic families.

The other thing that kind of bothered me about this book is that it was very one-sided about the cultural background it sought to portray. The blurb and a number of reviews described this book as being told from Elias' perspective, but if so then why is Palestinian (oh sorry, “Arab”... I don't think this book uses the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian” even once) culture reduced to just tea and spiced food and, apparently, going along with it when your parents arrange your marriage to someone you barely know? Towards the end, Elias is all like, “I don't even believe in culture or religion,” and I have to wonder if that was mainly to make him more palatable to a largely-Jewish readership, because certainly none of the Jewish characters ever talk about Jewish culture or Judaism being meaningless. The book is, at least, critical of Israeli policies in Jerusalem (like the expropriation of all Palestinian-owned properties in West Jerusalem) as well as of the idea that Israelis and Palestinians can't live alongside one another (praising coexistence in Jaffa, for example). But that feels like the bare minimum that this book should've done, you know? It's almost like the author was implying that Israelis and Palestinians can coexist, just so long as Palestinians don't stand out or do anything too “Palestinian-y”. Maybe that wasn't the reason for the oversight, and rather it was just that Talshir didn't know very much about Palestinian culture (unlike her own, obviously) and either didn't want to do the research or didn't trust herself to depict it authentically or thought (since this book has been translated from Hebrew) depicting Elias' culture would set her readers against him. But eh. The imbalance was something that irked me pretty much throughout the book. ( )