Israel: A Personal History

A deeply intelligent and moving reckoning with the Zionist project by one of Sweden’s most distinguished writers

Close, close beneath the land I had once rooted myself in and loved, lay a land filled with violence, injustice and hatred

On 22 April 1962 what remains of Goran Rosenberg’s family embark from his native Sweden to make Israel their new home. Transplanted into a nation born only a few months before him, he is first enchanted by its vitality, imprinted by its ideals. It marks the beginning of a lifetime’s journey across the promised land and into its past, a reckoning with the utopian visions and desperate fears that went into Zionism as well as the violence and dispossession of its realization. This landmark book tells the story of that journey – through buried stories and erased villages, dreams and disillusionments, and the histories still unfurling today.