The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

Sandy Tolan

Bloomsbury USA, Apr 17, 2007 - Biography & Autobiography - 362 pages

In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR's Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.

What people are saying

Review: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

User Review  - Jessie Light - Goodreads

Wow. Everyone should read this book. I learned more about the conflict and history in Israel/Palestine than I ever thought I would, and I am so glad that I did. Not only is this book (a true story ...

Review: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

User Review  - Larina Alston - Goodreads

I enjoyed the personal story. I found myself having a harder time focusing when they get into the historical facts.

About the author

Sandy Tolan is the author of Me & Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-five Years Later. He has written extensively for magazines and newspapers, and has produced dozens of documentaries for National Public Radio and Public Radio International. He was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an I. F. Stone Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches international reporting.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
• Author: Sandy Tolan
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, annotated
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2007
• ISBN: 1596913436, 9781596913431
• Length: 362 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Religious; History / Middle East / General; Political Science / American Government / General; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural