The shortlist for this year’s JQ-Wingate Literary Prize has been revealed. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in June.The shortlist:
• The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck (Harvill Secker)
• My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness by Adina Hoffman (Yale UP)
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (Little, Brown)
• The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand (Verso)
About The Invention of the Jewish People
by Shlomo Sand translated by Yael Lotan
In this bold and ambitious new book, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times — when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation. Sand forensically dissects the official story — and demonstrates the construction of a nationalist myth and the collective mystification that this requires.
A bestseller in Israel and France, Shlomo Sand’s book has sparked a widespread and lively debate. Should the Jewish people regard themselves as genetically distinct and identifiable across the millennia — or should that doctrine now be left behind and if the myth of the “Jewish state” is dismantled, could this open a path toward a more inclusive Israeli state, content within its borders?
Shlomo Sand studied history at the University of Tel Aviv and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. He currently teaches contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv. His other books include L’Illusion du politique: Georges Sorel et le débat intellectuel 1900, Georges Sorel en son temps, Le XXe siècle à l’écran and Les Mots et la Terre: Les Intellectuels en Israël.
More information about the award here.
More information on the book here.
