When I Lived In Modern Times

Author/Guide: Linda Grant

Why a Booktrail?

WW2- A fascinating account of the birth of Israel from the viewpoint of a young Jewish girl from London.

ISBN: 978-1862074040
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

April 1946.

Evelyn Sert, a 20 year old, Jewish hairdresser from Soho, sails for Palestine. This is the place where Jewish refugees and idealists are gathering from all over Europe to start a new life in this brand new country.

The new city people are heading for is Tel Aviv and Evelyn Sert is one of them, full of hope and expectation. When she gets there, she reinvents herself and finds love. This is the new land and the land of promise and where anything is possible isn’t it?

However danger lies ahead for this new Jewish land is one that is unstable and the fledging state will encounter many problems ahead.

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Travel Guide

The historic moment in 1946 when a young girl from London sets sail to Israel, before it was Israel and when the British were still present.

Evelyn who is young and an orphan comes in search of her own story and identity. Jewish, she feels a strong sense of belonging and wonder to this fledging middle eastern place and needing to find her own way in the world, to find her own identity,she comes to the city of Tel Aviv at the middle of its very own and historically significant identity crisis.

“When they spoke of Palestine as a land without people for a people without land, I had imagined it as a deserted place, an empty quarter crossed by Arab nomads until the Jews arrived, escaping Hitler”

Politics aside, and there is a a lot to learn from this book since it weaves in historical strands and other political background, this is a story about identity and belonging in a land in flux.

“Earth. Smells. Hills. Dust.”

Living in a Kibbutz, she moves to Tel Aviv but it’s the idea behind the kibbutz – the living together in harmony with Arab neighbours and sense of community – which seems to have shaped the city of Tel Aviv.

We discovered a lot with Evelyn as narrator – and the fact that Tel Aviv is known as the white city for its large humber of Bauhaus style home was particularly fascinating. Brick by brick, this city shapes in front of you and it’s good to have a front row seat.