Stateless

‘It’s important he knows his birthright.’

‘Stateless’ is the second book in ‘The Heritage Trilogy’, which covers three thousand years of the history of the Israelite people. Each of the three novels (two have been published so far) covers one thousand years of this history, and this novel covers the period from 161 CE (about 25 years after the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem by the Romans) - to 1099 (CE) (the First Crusade).

The historical story is woven around a more contemporary story of Jewish people between 1931 and 1949. While this is a historical novel about the Israelite people, with Jerusalem as the centre, the story follows the lives of two families across the centuries. We meet the descendants of these two families in the twentieth century, before the horrific events of World War II. As World War draws to a close and the world learns about Hitler’s genocide, a permanent home for the remaining Jewish people becomes both increasingly important, and urgent. In Palestine, the Arab and Jewish forces fight each other and the British for hegemony. In this festering environment, we meet Shalman, a freedom fighter and archaeologist and his wife Judit, a refugee from the USSR.

‘If we’re to keep this land, we have to fight for it; we have to take it..’

But Israel’s future as an independent nation is not secure. A conspiracy, originating in Stalin’s USSR, aims to make Israel a Soviet puppet. This conspiracy is in the hands of a small, committed group of Jewish Communists, one of whom is Judit.

‘And as Israel’s history was written, Judit would become one of Israel’s fallen heroines, remembered for the good deeds she had done to secure the nation. Known only to a few number of Israelis for the hateful, traitorous, murderous things she’d committed as an agent of the Kremlin.’

Now I’ve read the first two novels in this trilogy, I’ll have to wait (im)patiently until late 2015 for the final instalment. It took me a little while to become used to the shifts between characters and time periods, but once I did I enjoyed following both the individual characters and the history. I need that third novel in order to work out all of the connections. Alan Gold and Mike Jones have brought the history to life, and have peopled it with interesting and believable characters.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Simon and Schuster (Australia) for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith