The Way to the Spring by Ben Ehrenreich (Granta, £14.99)
In 2011, Palestinians living in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh defied the Israeli occupation through weekly acts of civil disobedience. It was then that Nariman Tamimi—a wife, mother, sister and activist—was arrested for the second time. “They wanted to silence me,” she says, “which meant that what I was doing was important.” Nariman’s is just one of many brutally honest testimonials from Ben Ehrenreich’s first non-fiction book The Way to the Spring.
Using three years’ worth of conversations with Palestinians living—or surviving —in the West Bank, Ehrenreich delivers a portrayal of the occupation that subjects the Israeli armed forces to an unforgiving examination. Rather than an account of its political circumstances, this book is an intimate chronicle of the lives most affected by the occupation, those who are the first to be dehumanised by Israeli media and the first to fall under “the rubber-coated bullets of the IDF.”
Ehrenreich writes with an exhaustive knowledge of the region, its history and politics, without ever letting the facts outshine the singularity of each story. But there is no trace of a bigger picture in this book, only one side of a contested story. He admits there is “no attempt here to describe the events through the eyes of the Israelis,” instead offering a voice to those who are rarely able to use their own. The Way to the Spring is a must-read for anyone curious about the occupied territories.
