----------------------- Message requiring your approval ---------------------- From: "Stuart Schnee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ha-Safran]: Yom Kippur Reading: Adjusting Sights by Haim Sabato
Adjusting Sights by Haim Sabato (The Toby Press, $19.95, ISBN: 1902881702) is the best selling Israeli memoir which describes the Yom Kippur War from the perspective of a young yeshiva student who fights in a tank unit on the Golan Heights. This book is available through Brodart, Ingram, Baker & Taylor and bookstores as well as internet retailers such as Amazon.com
When war breaks out in 1973, childhood friends Haim and Dov are called up together to serve in their tank battalion, but in the chaos of battle the friends are separated. A month later, Haim returns alone, on his first leave home. As he struggles to come to terms with his experiences, weary and saddened but sustained by his religious faith, there is one question that remains uppermost in Haim's mind: What happened to Dov during those fateful days after the outbreak of war? Reminiscent of S.Y. Agnon, Sabato's compelling, poignant account tells the story of a young man who has to adjust not only the sights of his tank, but his understanding of the world he lives in.
Much of the narrative of ADJUSTING SIGHTS centers around recounting those chaotic first days of war endured by Haim, a tank gunner, along the hills and valleys of the Golan Heights. Interspersed with the action are Haim�s memories of childhood, growing up with Dov in an immigrant neighborhood of Jerusalem. The religious teachings Haim and his fellow soldiers have grown up with are constantly with them as they deal with the devastating disarray of their forces and their fear of failure and capture. Prayer and Talmudic passages form a framework that enables them to cope with their experiences. Sabato skillfully draws us into the individual worlds of these young men; their courage as they help each other, their pain as they deal with the loss of comrades.
The Critics:
SHIMON PERES, Former Prime Minister of Israel
�Sabato�s writing wells up from deep sources that will carry you away and continually surprise. Adjusting Sights is a unique book that will surprise you, even as it leaves you changed forever.�
Kirkus Reviews: ��psychologically astute and movingly expressive of the mysterious sustaining power of deeply held faith�
The Jerusalem Post: �Sparing in physical description, the novel is supremely aural, the different timbres almost miraculously rendered by Hillel Halkin into vibrant English.�
Stuart Schnee The Toby Press LLC PO Box 8531 New Milford, CT 06776-8531
www.tobypress.com
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