My Father, His Daughter

My Father, His Daughter

Yaël Dayan

Yaël Dayan

A life of one of Israel's greatest heroes, as seen through his daughter's eyes Moshe Dayan was one of the greatest military leaders in Israel's short history. A child of the first kibbutz movement in British Palestine, he went on to lead Israel to victory in the 1948 War of Independence and to liberate Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. Dayan was not only a soldier but a politician, an archaeologist, and a larger-than-life figure who helped shape the state of Israel. In My Father, His Daughter, Yaël Dayan, who herself served in the Israeli Parliament, shares an uncensored look into her father's life and her own conflicted relationship with him. With poignancy and candor, Dayan creates a profound yet nuanced profile of her father. She relates his strong national pride, his boldness in dealing with other world leaders, and his troubles at home to his disintegrating marriage and multiple affairs. As revealing as My Father, His Daughter...
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New Face in the Mirror

New Face in the Mirror

Yaël Dayan

Yaël Dayan

Inspired by the author's own experience, a novel of one female soldier's fight to maintain her independence while serving in the Israeli army Ariel Ron is the spoiled yet fiercely proud daughter of a renowned Israeli colonel, entering the army for her two-year period of compulsory military service. Rebellious and self-centered, she is determined to keep her independence within this highly structured system. Ariel expects that being the colonel's daughter will win her favors in the army—but she is sorely mistaken. As she comes to terms with this reality, she embarks on a journey that forces her to look inward and reflect on her own values and connection to her homeland. Based on Yaël Dayan's own experience in the Israeli army and partly written when she was not yet twenty, this searing and honest first novel is a rare look at a young woman struggling to find her true self in a strange and uncomfortable environment.
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Three Weeks in October

Three Weeks in October

Yaël Dayan

Yaël Dayan

An Israeli couple's emotional struggle in the early days of the Yom Kippur War Amalia and Daniel find their lives thrown into utter chaos when the Yom Kippur War breaks out in October 1973. Amalia volunteers in the burn ward of a military hospital, where she witnesses the carnage firsthand. A badly injured, unidentified solider captures her attention, and she fights to keep him alive as her husband, an undercover intelligence officer, pursues his own mission on the front lines in the Egyptian campaign. The juxtaposition of Amalia's life as a civilian doing her best to contribute to the war effort with her husband's dangerous search for an intelligence operative behind enemy lines illustrates both the mundaneness and the menace of war. In this somber, touching, and reflective novel, Yaël Dayan compellingly depicts the strength and survival of one couple's marital bond under the most harrowing and heartbreaking of circumstances.
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Death Had Two Sons

Death Had Two Sons

Yaël Dayan

Yaël Dayan

A father is forced to choose between two sons, a decision that haunts the family decades later Haim Kalinsky lies in an Israeli hospital, terminal lung cancer about to cut his life short. Across the street stands his son Daniel, unable to visit his dying father because of an excruciating decision Haim made during the Second World War. When the Nazis marched into Warsaw, Haim awaited the inevitable. After his wife was deported, the German soldiers returned, sending Haim and his two sons, Daniel and Shmuel, to one of the extermination camps. It was there that Haim was confronted with the unanswerable question by one of the camp guards as they disembarked from the trains: Which son will you choose to live? With only a moment to decide, Haim instinctively pulled Shmuel to him, condemning Daniel to die. Decades later, it is Daniel who has survived the brutality of the camps and Shmuel who has perished. Strangers to each other, Daniel faces...
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