'Friedlander's shimmering prose and admirably versatile points of view make his stories
compelling' SARAH MOSS 'In these wise capacious achingly beautiful stories Omer Friedlander
maps the hidden geography of the human heart like a young Chekhov' ANTHONY MARRA 'A beautiful
debut by a deeply humane writer. Every story is a vivid world unto itself intensely felt and
often revelatory' NICOLE KRAUSS A divorced con-artist and his young daughter sell empty bottles
of 'holy' air to credulous tourists. In a bombed-out Beirut radio station a Lebanese
Scheherazade enchants three young soldiers with her nightly tales. Ahead of a school 'Show and
Tell' two brothers kidnap a Shoah survivor from a supermarket to pose as their grandfather. An
Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son a soldier killed in
Gaza. From the limestone alleyways of Jerusalem to the desolate Negev Desert and the sprawling
orange groves of Jaffa Omer Friedlander's stories are fairy tales turned on their head by the
stakes of real life where moments of fragile intimacy mix with comedy and notes of the absurd.
Casting his eye not on the region's conflicts but on the hopes and failures of its people
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is at times darkly funny at others quietly devastating.
