Williams - Its easier to reach heaven than the end of the street: a Jerusalem memoir

Praise for Its Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street

A fascinating account... Emma Williams is an honest, fair-minded, humane, highly intelligent young woman with a passion for justice who turns out to be an elegant, perceptive, delightful writer.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

A sustained masterpiece of the contemporary genre. It deserves to be read very widely: Nothing I have read during the last decade about the Israel-Palestine conflict in journalistic reportage, political analyses, histories, personal stories, or novels comes close to its brilliance in exposing the accumulating human debris of this monstrous situation. Williamss writing in this memoir displays the tenacity of Anna Funder, the intrepidity of a Ryszard Kapuscinski, the politically gendered sensitivity of Nadine Gordimer, the reconciliatory instincts of Desmond Tutu, and the literary competence of Joyce Carol Oates. Its a joy to read.

Les Rosenblatt, Arena magazine

The best account Ive read of the tragedy that took the Palestinians and Israelis hostage.

Daniel Ben Simon

What Emma Williams has to tell us in this riveting and moving memoir is of two peoples living in a time of terror, fear, anger and death. Her humanity and empathy allow her to see both peoples in all their individuality, rather than as political footballs...It is one of the most significant contributions to establishing the day-to-day reality of the time.

Linda Grant

Emma Williams has pulled off an amazing literary and journalistic feata study of modern Israel that shows the best and the worst on each side of the tragedy, and which engages our sympathy with both. She writes beautifully.

Boris Johnson

Brilliant and moving... one of the best of recent books about Israel and Palestine.

William Dalrymple, New Statesman

[A] brilliant memoir... she succeeds like few others in her ability to view the situation through the eyes of Jew and Arab... Drawing our sympathy now to one, now to the other, she envies those with a one-eyed view, undisturbed by the layers of complication... Her eye for detail conveys the situation more painfully than statistics... What she has produced is a human document; sensitive, compassionate, and superbly written. The exemplary notes, maps, and glossary... help to make this memoir more illuminating and instructive than many a pundits tome.

Theo Richmond, The Spectator

Short of a crash course in Nablus or a Gaza refugee camp, I recommend Emma Williamss expatriate memoir of Jerusalem in the second intifada as an initial exposure to the dispiriting reality behind the propaganda, theirs and ours... Israelis and Palestinians are like angry twins joined at the hip. [This book] is an engrossing exploration of what that means.

Eric Silver, Jewish Chronicle

This book must be one of the most honest accounts of those terrible years. Its proportionate, subtle and comprehensive... biased towards nobody but the voices of moderation and hope.

The Guardian

This is a clever book, in the best sense of the word. Emma Williams deftly weaves two stories into one, using a personal journey through the grinding Israeli-Palestinian conflict to explore its larger dynamics and personalities... The books strength lies in its many conversations, which capture the relentless determination of what Williams rightly describes as two extraordinary peoples to remain blind to the plight of the other... A valuable, highly readable contribution.

The Australian

Many books have been written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... What makes Emma Williams memoir unique is the honesty of her observations on ordinary life: what it is like to live with occupation and suicide bombers... The beauty of this book is that, as the authors political awareness grows, so does that of the reader. She explains the conflict in simple terms, without getting bogged down by the tedious chronology that weighs down other Jerusalem memoirs. Yet everything is here.

Daily Telegraph

This intelligent, incisive account... and her cool analysis of the humanity and hypocrisy at the heart of the Israeli/Palestinian fighting is striking.

The Times

Compelling... extraordinary and insightful account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Harpers Bazaar

Our choice of the best recent books.

Sunday Times

Emma Williams has gone to great lengths to talk to both sympathetic and unsympathetic Israelis, chronicling the human cost of Palestinian suicide bombings as well as of Israeli incursions, curfews, punitive shellings and bombings.... A reader only vaguely aware of the reality behind the headlines will find much that is observant and saddening in her vivid portrait of this tribal dispute.

The Independent

Williams is an excellent recorder of dialogue on both sides of the political divide. Her purpose is to illuminate the plight of each community... It makes grim reading, but it is all true.

Sunday Times

On one level, it is a personal memoir... On another level, it strikes in a more profound way, keeping at front and centre the people afflicted by the conflict and making tangible the fear to which many are condemned. It also provides the political and historical context of the events of the last six years, lightly told.

Financial Times

As well as telling the story of her familys two-and-a half-year stay in Jerusalem, it offers a careful and accessible explanation of the background to the situation.... Williams, who studied history at Oxford before taking a degree in medicine, wanted to explain the difficulties of ordinary life that fail to make the news, but which, over years, fuel much larger events... She got to know the situation first-hand, from both sides.... Williams manages to be scrupulously even-handed about one of the most contentious situations in the world.

The Scotsman

The insanity of the Israel-Palestine conflict is a constant background in global affairs, but how do we assess its impact on those who have to endure it? Emma Williams account of that experience provides a rare glimpse into its day-to-day reality... Her direct and punchy style fits the atmosphere of constant tension she describes, and brings it to the surface of our conscience.

Canberra Times

Emma Williams Jerusalem memoir is a vivid account of the quotidian existence of Israelis and Palestinians in each others hostile midsts... a poignant response to the usual misinformation about the Palestinians.

The Oldie

[Williamss] experience, recorded with painstaking honesty, will be welcomed by anyone who wants to understand the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... In the midst of denial and the language of force, Williamss own voice seeks truth, moderation and dialogue.

New Statesman

[Charles] Glass wrote that Williams could do anything. What she does best is toe the extremely valuable line of impartiality while describing the daily life of people in hell.

Sunday Times

First American edition published in 2010 by

OLIVE BRANCH PRESS

An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.

46 Crosby Street, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060

www.interlinkbooks.com

Copyright Emma Williams, 2006, 2010

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Originally published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London