Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv

The literary sensation that has stirred the French publishing world from award-winning author Marco Koskas.

Juliette has come to Tel Aviv to be with the love of her life. But when she shows up at Elias’s apartment, he’s with another woman. With nowhere else to go, Juliette falls in with a tight-knit group of French expats living in this city by the sea.

There’s Manu, the retired adult film star turned real estate agent; Diabolo, a former mobster and aspiring media mogul; and Olga, a head-turning beauty who becomes fast friends with Juliette. When Elias, a film school dropout, initiates a scheme intended to make him some fast cash so he can impress Olga with flashy jewelry, he unwittingly gets Juliette and Olga thrown in jail.

As all the friends try their misguided best to help one another, they all must ask themselves: Can people take responsibility for something they didn’t do in order to be absolved for all the things they have done?

Marco Koskas, the author of fifteen books, was born in Tunisia, grew up in France, and now lives in Israel. In 1979, his novel Balace Bounel won the Prix du Premier Roman, and he was a fellow of the French Academy in Rome from 1980 to 1982. In 2012, reviewing Mon cœur de père (Éditions Fayard), Patrick Besson wrote in Le Point: “Koskas is a fighter for his own style. He has remained raw as a Tartar warrior.” In 2018, after being rejected by numerous publishers, Koskas self-published Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv on CreateSpace, and the novel was short-listed for France’s prestigious Prix Renaudot.

David Ball is professor emeritus of French and comparative literature, Smith College. He was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the French Republic in 2017. He was president of the American Literary Translators Association from 2003 to 2005. His Darkness Moves: An Henri Michaux Anthology 1927–1982 won the MLA’s award for outstanding literary translation in 1995, and his Jean Guéhenno Diary of the Dark Years: 1940–1944 won the French-American Foundation 2014 prize for translation (nonfiction).