A Palestine Affair

In British-occupied Palestine after World War I, Mark Bloomberg, a beleaguered London painter, and Joyce, his American wife, witness the murder of a prominent Orthodox Jew. Joyce, a non-Jew and ardent Zionist, is drawn into an affair with the British investigating officer, while Mark seeks solace in the exotic colors and contours of the Middle Eastern landscape. Each of the three has come to Palestine to escape grief, and yet—caught in the crosshairs of history—they will all be forced to confront the very issues they hoped to leave behind in this swift and sensuous novel of artful concealment and roiling passions.

Wilson's portrait of Chagall is altogether more historical, more political, and edgier than conventional wisdom would have us believe–showing us how Chagall is the emblematic Jewish artist of the twentieth century.

"Like the best of historical fiction, Wilson's story is placed in an imagined past, but it is really happening right now. . . . You're likely to stay up late reading." —The Washington Post Book World

"An engrossing, complex, and fearless tale of politics, arts, murder, sex, and history (personal and global) set in the rough and tumble that was Palestine in 1924." —Anita Diamant, author of The Red Tent

"A Palestine Affair is hard to put down. . . . [It] echoes its modernist predecessors: Forster's A Passage to India, Conrad's The Secret Agent, and James's The Princess Casamassima." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Tightly knit. . . . Wilson is exceptionally attuned to the range of opinion and complex sense of identity of the Jews living in Palestine, as well as the subtle but potentially explosive tension that characterizes everyday interactions under colonial occupation." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A Palestine Affair evokes, quite tangibly, the days of the Mandate. This is a true and touching act of the imagination. The book's very sexy, a nostalgic and provocative envisioning of that time. I recommend it highly." —David Mamet