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Polemical, Timely, and Astute, Assaf Gavron's "The Hilltop" Is a Novel of Realism and Comedy

Aired on Wednesday, November 12th.

On this installment of ST, we speak with Assaf Gavron, an Israeli novelist whose widely hailed fiction has been translated into several languages. Gavron's latest novel, newly available in English from Scribner's, is called "The Hilltop." Acclaimed by at least one critic as "the Great Israeli Novel" and winner of the prestigious Bernstein Prize, this ambitious, many-layered, and occasionally quite funny story explores contemporary life in a West Bank settlement. It's a novel that is, as The Wall Street Journal has observed, "brilliantly attuned to the madhouse complexities of the current settlement crisis.... The superbly orchestrated chaos [in Gavron's story] makes this an indispensable novel of, as one character dubs it, the 'Wild West Bank.'" And further, as was noted of this novel is a starred review in Kirkus: "Writing with crisp insight and dry humor, Israeli author Gavron tells a lively tale of life in an embattled Jewish settlement on an arid, rocky West Bank hilltop in this award-winning novel.... Gabi's and Roni's stories unfold gradually, and in the midst of this wise and waggish tale, we may find ourselves feeling unexpectedly invested in these disparate brothers' fates. Slowly and incrementally, like those settlers on that craggy West Bank hilltop, Gavron's story gains a foothold in our hearts and minds and stubbornly refuses to leave."

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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