Book in Brief: The Blue Mountain

Meir Shalev's Evocative Prose on the Sacrifices and Dreams of Israel's Pioneers

Meir Shalev’s The Blue Mountain, with its profound and evocative prose, reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Both novels use bold, vibrant language to create immersive worlds. Both show deep sympathy and understanding for their characters’ passions and the destinies those passions shape.

The Blue Mountain charts the lives and deaths of brave pioneers in a Moshav who sacrifice and sometimes sabotage their happiness in the quest to establish the Israel of their dreams and ideologies. Despite their labor, the Israel they envision never fully grows from the land—some of it, in fact, withers tragically—reflecting their resilience and the complex interpersonal realities of nation-building.

This is my first engagement with Shalev, the beloved Israeli author who died in 2023. I should finish The Blue Mountain this week and am eager to start his award-winning A Pigeon and a Boy, which I just ordered.