Novel
Infiltration
התגנבות יחידים
Yehoshua Kenaz · 1986
Synopsis
In the mid-1950s, a platoon of young recruits does its training at an Israeli army camp; all have been kept out of combat for minor physical defects. The narrator, nicknamed Melabes because he comes from Petah Tikva, wakes from a faint caused by a sentry-strangling exercise. Around him: Avner Gabbai, a Jerusalemite from a poor Oriental family; Miki Spector, a footballer stopped by a heart murmur; Alon, a kibbutz son who dreams of a combat unit; one gang of Moroccans and Iraqis, another of young men from Rehavia.
Context
Kenaz had begun the book in the 1960s; it appeared in 1986 from Am Oved, in 597 pages, and had sold forty thousand copies by 1991. It stood out from earlier military narratives by telling of the army from the point of view of ordinary soldiers destined for non-combat posts, not of heroes. The narrative is threaded with facts of the period, the oil found at Heletz, the fedayeen raids, the operations of Unit 101. It was counted in 2007 among the ten major books in the history of Israel, and Dover Kosashvili made a film of it in 2010.
Who it is for
A novel of nearly six hundred pages, translated into French. It is better to know who the fedayeen were, whose raids come up in the recruits' conversations.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the peaks of the Hebrew novel and as the most studied of Kenaz's books; a bookshop success from its release.
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