When I Lived In Modern Times: Summary and book reviews of When I Lived In Modern Times by Linda Grant, plus links to an excerpt from When I Lived In Modern Times and a biography of Linda Grant.
When I Lived In Modern Times
by Linda Grant
Hardcover: Jan 2001,
288 pages.
Paperback: Jan 2002,
272 pages.
A number-one bestseller in London and the winner of Britain's prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction, When I Lived in Modern Times is one woman's story of discovery--of herself, of her heritage, and of the nation that would one day become Israel.
It is April 1946. For a weary and exhausted Europe, it's a time to begin picking up the pieces of the past, and for the armies of displaced persons on the move to slowly return home--if they still have one. But for Evelyn Sert, a twenty year-old woman from London standing on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine, it is a time of adventure and a time of change when anything seems possible.
Landing on the shores of a nation fighting to be born, Evelyn is quickly caught up in the spirited, chaotic churning of her new, strange country. Unsure of herself and where she belongs in this world whose only constant is change, she will become Eve and work in the unbearable heat of a kibbutz. As Evelyn, she will find a home, and a collection of friends as eccentric and disparate as the teeming metropolis of Tel Aviv itself. And as Priscilla, she will find love with a man who is not what he seems to be, as she is swept up as an unwitting spy in an underground army that is beyond anything she's ever imagined.
A coming-of-age story unlike any other, When I Lived in Modern Times illuminates a page of Twentieth century history that is at once exotic and familiar through the eyes of one of the most unforgettable heroines in contemporary fiction.
The Sunday Times (London)
A beautifully written, passionate novel.
The Sunday Times (London)
A beautifully written, passionate novel.
Publisher's Weekly
Starred Review. An unsentimental, iconoclastic coming-of-age story of both a country - Israel - and a young immigrant, Grant's novel introduces an unusually appealing heroine, narrator Evelyn Sert, and provides an unforgettable glimpse of a time and place rarely observed from an unsparing point of view.
Publisher's Weekly
Starred Review. An unsentimental, iconoclastic coming-of-age story of both a country - Israel - and a young immigrant, Grant's novel introduces an unusually appealing heroine, narrator Evelyn Sert, and provides an unforgettable glimpse of a time and place rarely observed from an unsparing point of view.
Independent on Sunday (UK)
Full of sharp humor, complex ironies and an acute eye for cultural clashes, this is a superb coming-of-age novel.
Scotland on Sunday
Written with uncluttered economy, high in quietly astute observation and underpinned by a rigorously searching investigation of its themes, this is a novel that both stimulates the mind and satisfies the heart.
Independent on Sunday (UK)
Full of sharp humor, complex ironies and an acute eye for cultural clashes, this is a superb coming-of-age novel.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Anonymous
Interesting, but entirely devoid of emotion. She didn't seem to care too much about what was going on around her. Having lived a sheltered life, I can't imagine what these changes must have felt like, but I didn't feel that the book brought me... Read More
Rated of 5
by Ariella
I am British and I now live in Israel having emmigrated here (albeit in 1999 and not 1946). And I am in love with Tel Aviv and its history.
To be honest I was quite surprised by the reviews that this book got since I was underwhelmed by... Read More
'Rarely does a writer come up with a first novel so assured, so powerful and engaging that you can be pretty sure that you will want to read everything this author is capable of writing'.
The year is 1949 and Nora, a prickly, strong-willed survivor of the Holocaust, has just walked off the boat in Israel with her German daughter-in-law, Louisa. Superb...a seamless interweaving of observation, memory, and imagination...A mature and absorbing story...
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