Skip to content
Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories

LEAVING PSAGOT

Yonatan Berg

A unique insight into the everyday life of a boy then young adult growing up in a West Bank settlement.
In his memoir LEAVING PSAGOT, Yonatan Berg looks back on his childhood and adolescent years growing up in Psagot, a disputed Jewish settlement in the West Bank, populated by religious Zionists.

Berg takes us on a tour into the concealed landscape of the settlement of his youth, a home which was both protective and desolate, rural and violent, open and closed, but mostly nourished by fear. Berg, who never felt quite native in this environment, decides to leave Psagot after military service and distant travel, but it is not without heartbreak that he does so.

From the French Editor's Foreword:
During the Six Day War in June 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, which until then was under Jordanian rule. It's colonization began after the war. In international terms, these are called "the occupied territories." In Israeli, this area is called "Judea-Samaria" by settlers, and "the territories" by left-wing Israelis. Psagot was created during a second wave of colonization, in 1976, when 3,000 dunams (300 hectares) of land located a few hundred meters from the Palestinian village of El-Bireh and the city of Ramallah were confiscated by the military to set up an Israeli base there. The Palestinian people who own the land were banned from building there. In 1981, the Israeli military administration authorized the establishment of its regional center. This is how Psagot was born. Three hundred Jewish families settle there till this day. Palestinian residents have carried out an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, which limits the settlement's growth, but does not order its dismantling.

YONATAN BERG was born in Jerusalem in 1981 to a religious family and raised in Psagot, a settlement in the West Bank. Youngest recipient of the Yehuda Amichai Prize, he is a leading Hebrew poet and writer. He has published three books of poetry, one memoir, and two novels. His first novel Five more minutes was awarded the Ministry of Culture Prize (2015) and received warm reviews in France (published by L'Antilope, 2018). A bibliotherapist by profession, he now teaches creative writing in Jerusalem.
Available products
Book

Published 2021-02-01 by Editions de l'Atilope

Comments

"Leaving Psagot" is a superb story. Yonatan Berg recounts his departure from the Jewish settlement of his childhood in a beautiful narrative that does not shy away from the complexities of the situation.