The Diamond Setter
  • Published: 15 April 2018
  • ISBN: 9781590518915
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99
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The Diamond Setter

A Novel

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Inspired by true events, this best-selling Israeli novel traces a complex web of love triangles, homoerotic tensions, and family secrets across generations and borders, illuminating diverse facets of life in the Middle East.

Inspired by true events, this best-selling Israeli novel traces a complex web of love triangles, homoerotic tensions, and family secrets across generations and borders, illuminating diverse facets of life in the Middle East.

The uneventful life of a jeweler from Tel Aviv changes abruptly in 2011 after Fareed, a handsome young man from Damascus, crosses illegally into Israel and makes his way to the ancient port city of Jaffa in search of his roots. In his pocket is a piece of a famous blue diamond known as "Sabakh." Intending to return the diamond to its rightful owner, Fareed is soon swept up in Tel Aviv's vibrant gay scene, and a turbulent protest movement. He falls in love with both an Israeli soldier and his boyfriend--the narrator of this book--and reveals the story of his family's past: a tale of forbidden love beginning in the 1930s that connects Fareed and the jeweler.
 
Following Sabakh's winding path, The Diamond Setter ties present-day events to a forgotten time before the establishment of the State of Israel divided the region. Moshe Sakal's poignant mosaic of characters, locales, and cultures encourages us to see the Middle East beyond its violent conflicts.
  • Published: 15 April 2018
  • ISBN: 9781590518915
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:
Share…

Praise for The Diamond Setter

"A fascinating glimpse into an early 20th century Middle East, where familial entanglements and intimacies of all kinds still flourished between Jews and Arabs." --Judith Frank, Eliza J. Clark Folger Professor of English at Amherst College and author of All I Love and Know

"Moshe Sakal's books make me miss a life I never lived. In The Diamond Setter, he surpasses himself [with] the blue diamond's wonderful journey across continents and nations. A rare book by a rare writer." -Ari Folman, Golden Globe winner, Oscar nominee for Waltz with Bashir

"Moshe Sakal's THE DIAMOND SETTER is an ambitious novel that is epic in scope (even while most of its geography comes back to a small section of Tel Aviv/Jaffa) and at the same time tightly focused on the intergenerational lives and loves of its characters. Like one of the titular multi-faceted gemstones, it's reflective and refractive-actively twisting and weaving our perceptions of history and myth (personal myths and national myths) and even the very notions of narrative itself, breaking the fourth wall of the novel as it explores activism, politics, pinkwashing, and the Arab Spring, love triangles, and the notions of home and the right(s) of return."-Lawrence Schimel, two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author and translator

"With beautiful and loving language, Sakal looks through the eyes of his characters to tell a story of Jaffa and Damascus in the early part of the last century, and today. The pages exude the aromas of a vibrant life that has since vanished." --Haaretz

"A wonderfully written novel, sweeping and engrossing." --Jerusalem Post

"The Diamond Setter is a novel bathed in mystery...Sakal has devised a fascinating family mythology." --Ynet (Yedioth Ahronoth)

"Lush, imaginative, and seductive, Moshe Sakal's The Diamond Setter offers a perfect combination of passion, suspense, insight, and beauty. Jessica Cohen's brilliant translation only further enhances the reading experience, making it into a true literary treat."--Ruby Namdar, author of The Ruined House

"A rich and delightful novel...[Sakal] offers a renewed consideration of our lives in this place--where today walls are built, and once there were no borders." --Nana 10