Author(s): Linda Grant

Fiction.

This is my story. Scratch a Jew and you've got a story. If you don't like elaborate picaresques full of unlikely events and tortuous explanations, steer clear of the Jews. If you want things to be straight forward, find someone else to listen to. You might even get to say something yourself. How do we begin a sentence? 'Listen . . .' Evelyn Sert is standing on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine. It's April 1946. Her journey takes her to the Bauhaus city of Tel Aviv, where the refugees from Nazi Germany are determined to forge a modern consciousness in the heart of the Middle East. As British colonial history draws to a bloody close and the new post-war Jew struggles to be born, everyone's story is about coming home. National identity, terrorism, love and the art of hairdressing are at the heart of When I Lived in Modern Times. This compulsively readable novel recreates a lost time, when the future was more important than the past and anything seemed possible.