A novel about Israel, which cannot, must not and will not live without its past

From the very first page, Ghila Piattelli’s novel takes us back to a not-too-distant past – namely the founding of the State of Israel – in which the inhabitants of a curious urban experiment in the centre of Jerusalem are presented with the keys to their homes by the country’s then Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. A clear metaphor for an Israel light years away from the country of today, where the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on 7 October, almost three years on, have still not received a visit from the current Prime Minister. “Wherever Home May Be”, published by Giuntina, is a novel that takes a path less travelled in contemporary fiction about Israel: it almost entirely eschews current political events to tell the story of a country built on memory, human relationships and individual wounds. Rather than a thriller – despite the investigation into the death of a psychiatric patient that occurred decades earlier – it is an ensemble novel about the search for one’s roots, and the possibility of finding, or rediscovering, a place to call ‘home’. The various narrative voices are precisely one of the novel’s strengths; they intertwine naturally and allow the reader to observe the same story from different perspectives: Sivan, Aviv, Nili, Ghita and the other inhabitants of the ‘madhouse’, as the building in which they live is called, are characters who embody fragility without ever descending into stereotype. The decision to make the block of flats the true protagonist of the story is also very effective. The building, in fact, in all its complexity, becomes a metaphor for Israel itself: a place inhabited by survivors, immigrants from different worlds, irreconcilable memories and bonds that withstand the test of time, sensitively recounting the birth of Israeli society through everyday lives rather than major historical events.

It is precisely here, however, that one of the novel’s paradoxes also emerges: the Israel depicted by Piattelli seems almost suspended in time. It is the country of the pioneers, of Holocaust survivors, of Jews from Arab countries, of Jerusalem’s historic neighbourhoods and of neighbourly relationships that seem to belong to another era. An authentic and deeply nostalgic Israel.

This narrative choice paints a rare and precious picture of a country that today is often portrayed solely through the prism of war, terrorism and political crises; yet it excludes the present – today’s society, which is far more fragmented, multicultural, technologically advanced and riven by tensions over identity. The transformations of the last thirty years serve as a backdrop, without really affecting the characters’ world. The author seems to have chosen to portray the Israel that continues to live on in the memories of her protagonists, crafting a novel about the weight of the past and the power of return, where ‘home’ does not refer to a geographical location, but to the people, memories and even the wounds that define us.

The result is an elegant, melancholic and deeply human narrative: a novel which, through its eccentric characters and a complex detective plot, tells the story of a country that no longer exists but which laid the foundations for the country that, on 27 October, will go to the polls at one of the most critical moments in the history of Judaism: not only for Israelis, but for the entire diaspora. In this sense, today more than ever, this novel stands as an intriguing dialogue between reality and fiction, past and future, utopia and dystopia: a cross-generational journey to better interpret—if not fully understand—the present.