Bene

The book hooked me almost instantly. I love the dark humor that runs through the entire book. But the story also gets very serious at times and powerfully demonstrates the magnitude of lynching and the prevailing racism in the U.S. and beyond. The only thing keeping me from rating the book a 5/5 was the ending which I didn't love as much. A great read nonetheless!

Very interesting read. I read it in prose which probably makes it a lot easier to read. Still, the first ~85% of the book just describes the war for Troy, who killed who including everyone's lineage - so it's a lot of lists of names. That makes it kind of hard to get through at times. The last part is more story, which makes it a lot more engaging.

Ein gutes Buch als Einstieg in die historische Entwicklung des Nahost-Konflikts und dessen Komplexität und Vielschichtigkeit. Die Beschreibungen wirken dabei auf mich als Laien recht neutral.

Was mir leider deutlich zu kurz kommt, ist die "Vorgeschichte" des Konflikts: die historischen und religiösen Hintergründe, auf die sich beide Seiten berufen, sowie die Entstehung und Gründung des israelischen Staates, die nur zu beginn kurz angerissen wird. Diese würden meiner Meinung nach helfen, den Konflikt noch besser zu verstehen.

I found it rather hard to read and had to push myself through it. The reason I still did was that it brought up some very interesting ideas to think about regarding the absurdity of life and how to deal with that.