Dinner at the Center of the Earth
Nathan Englander, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524732738
Summary
The best work yet from the Pulitzer finalist and best-selling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges—a political thriller that unfolds in the highly charged territory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and pivots on the complex relationship between a secret prisoner and his guard.
— A prisoner in a secret cell.
— The guard who has watched over him a dozen years.
— An American waitress in Paris.
— A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman.
— And The General, Israel's most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner's existence.
From these vastly different lives Nathan Englander has woven a powerful, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, even as the lives of its citizens become fatefully and inextricably entwined — a political thriller of the highest order that interrogates the anguished, violent division between Israelis and Palestinians, and dramatizes the immense moral ambiguities haunting both sides.
Who is right, who is wrongc — who is the guard, who is truly the prisoner? A tour de force from one of America's most acclaimed voices in contemporary fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1970
• Where—West Hempstead, Long Island , New York, USA
• Education—State University of New York, Binghampton
• Awards—PEN/Malamud Award; Frank O'Connor Short Story Award
• Currently—lives in New York City
Nathan Englander is an American short story writer and novelist. His debut short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, was published in 1999; his second, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2012), won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His novels include The Ministry of Special cases (2007) and Dinner at the Center of the Earth (2017).
Biography
Nathan Englander was born and raised in West Hempstead on Long Island, New York, in what is part of the Orthodox Jewish community. He attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County for high school and graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. In the mid-1990s, he moved to Israel, where he lived for five years.
Englander now lives both in Brooklyn, New York, and in Madison, Wisconsin. He has taught fiction at City University of New York - Hunter College in the MFA Creative Writing program. He currently teaches fiction in the MFA program at New York University.
Literary career
Since the 1999 publication of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Englander has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, and a fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
Four of his short stories have appeared in editions of The Best American Short Stories:
— "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" (2000 ed.: guest editor, E.L. Doctorow
— "How We Avenged the Blums" (2006 ed.): guest ed.,r Ann Patchett
— "Free Fruit for Young Widows" (2011 ed.): guest ed., Geraldine Brooks
— "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" (2012 ed.): guest ed., Tom Perrotta.
The Ministry of Special Cases, Englander's 2007 novel is set in 1976 in Buenos Aires during Argentina's "Dirty War." His 2017 novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth is concerned with the Israel-Palestinian conflict and has elements of a political thriller.
Englander has also served as juror for Canada's 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/3/2017.)
Book Reviews
Nathan Englander's many-splendored new novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth, is a guilty pleasure — guilty because you wonder throughout if a book highlighting the endless cycles of trespass and vengeance that define the modern state of Israel should be quite so much fun.… Don't be alarmed, the flights are strategic: Just when you think you've been swept into a political thriller … you're back among the real and present depredations of history. Such radical shifts in mood and tone allow him the latitude to do what he's always done best, in story after indelible story: depict individuals in their quixotic attempts to hang onto conscience, identity and hope while history tries to pry loose their tenuous grasp.
Steve Stern - New York Times Book Review
A kaleidoscopic fairy tale of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.… One of the exhilarating aspects of Dinner at the Center of the Earth is its expansive sense of space and time.… The effect is to heighten events, to transcend history in favor of a more allegorical realm.… Englander has built a complex structure, by which his narrative reveals itself in pieces, and the less we know in advance, the more vividly we feel its turns… with this novel he frames history as both an act and a failure of the imagination, which is to say, in inherently, and inescapably, human terms.
Los Angeles Times
Glorious…devastating…a beautiful masterpiece.
NPR
With chapters that toggle back and forth in time and in location, the narrative begins on the Israeli side of the Gaza border in 2014, before jumping to Paris and Berlin in 2002…. Englander is a wise observer with an empathetic heart.
Publishers Weekly
Englander articulates Israeli-Palestinian strife and Israel's current moral conundrums without sounding didactic. If anything, the discussion feels sketchy, and the cross-cutting among the disparate parts of the story can be disorienting.… VERDICT Smart and intriguing but not always satisfying. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
Equal parts political thriller and tender lamentation … in swirling, nonlinear fashion, Israeli-Palestinian tensions and moral conflicts.… Ultimately, Englander suggests that shared humanity and fleeting moments of kindness …hold the potential for hope, even peace.
Booklist
Englander fails to fully weave [the chapters].… [S]ometimes he strains toward humor, sometimes toward drama, without quite reaching either one.… An uneasy blend of political intrigue, absurdity, and romance struggles to establish a steady, never mind believable, tone.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The epigraph, from Julian Barnes, reads, "There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest." What does "accumulation" refer to in the context of this novel?
2. Who do you think is the main character of the novel?
3. Each character believes that he or she is doing the right thing, given the circumstances. In your opinion, whose justifications ring true? Is there "right" or "wrong" here?
4. Throughout the novel, Englander shifts time and perspective. How does this affect the reading experience?
5. On page 8, Englander writes, "In his own defense, as relates to the complication he hasn’t yet copped to, the guard has only been trying to protect Prisoner Z this whole time.… He’s been guarding Prisoner Z in more ways than the prisoner could understand." What does he mean?
6. The question of identity laces through the novel—for example, on page 63, Z thinks, "How could he have ended up here? How had a little, religious, Jewish-American boy from Long Island become an Israeli operative, living undercover in Paris, and now a traitor to his adopted state? How could he have ended up being so many kinds of people at once?" What point is Englander making?
7. Discuss the General. What role does he play in the novel?
8. What do we learn from the General’s "Limbo" passages?
9. The structure of the novel is circular, and the conflict itself is in many ways circular (in terms of action and reaction). How is this tied to the novel’s themes? What point do you think Englander is trying to make?
10. How, and in what ways, did Prisoner Z defend or betray his country? Can you make an argument for his patriotism? Is he a traitor or is he loyal? Is it possible to be both? What do you think the author believes?
11. Discuss the relationship between Prisoner Z and the guard. Are they friends? What justification could the guard have had for shielding Prisoner Z from news of the General?
12. On pages 163 and 164, Prisoner Z insists to the guard that he can do something more to help Z’s situation. Later on, the guard brings him a gift. How are these events connected? How do you feel about the Guard’s final gift to Prisoner Z?
13. The guard and Z have similar relationships with their mothers. How do the mothers in the novel serve the story?
14. What insights do we gain from Ruthi’s time in Lifta?
15. On page 224, Englander writes, "This very last time, holding Prisoner Z’s dizzy head in his lap, the guard has gone as far as either dared at addressing it. He had posed a question to Prisoner Z, to himself, to the cameras, as if confronting a power higher than them both. How, oh how, has it come to this?" How would you answer that question?
16. The mapmaker says, on page 234, "Just picture it, the two of us in no-man’s-land, on the blurry line beneath neither country. Me and you, eating together between worlds. A dinner at the center of the earth." Why is this LAST phrase an apt title for the novel?
17. In what ways is the final scene a metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)