Orna Landau

 

Orna Landau is an Israeli author, book editor and publisher. Her previous books, for both adults and children, some of which were translated into other languages, enjoyed critical acclaim and became bestsellers. Last Stop: Paradise - written and published less than eight months after the October 7th attack, while the war continues to be waged and the same government remains in power - became a topic of conversation, controversy and inspiration.

​

Last Stop: Paradise

Novel

Publisher: Shtayim

Year: 2024

255 pp.

 

Translation rights: World

Audio visual rights: World

Translation: Partial English and long synopsis available

 

“Why are you doing this?”, she hears Jonathan's voice, and he is irritated. “Because someone has to,” she replied. Those were still the days after [the tragedy], and the construction of the wall had just begun. On the TV news, experts debated the danger, but men and women appeared on talk show panels and spoke of a new-old region that needed to be redeemed and settled, and praised the pristine beauty, and the land crying out for farmers. She and Jonathan sat in their living room, and she said to him, “Look, it's just like the old days! They even speak differently. Who says ‘redeeming the land’ or ‘crying out’ any more” And he said, “You pay too much attention to words.”

After the calamity later known as “what happened”, Shira, a somewhat famous writer, decides that if she stays home, sitting in front of the television, she will surely explode from anger and hate. So she gets into her car and drives south, where people like her, nostalgic dreamers, come to make the desert bloom, cultivate and revive the forsaken land as well as themselves, and under the shadow of a great wall, start everything anew. As always, they come with the best intentions. But where will they lead them this time?

 

Last Stop: Paradise, a book written in a frenzy after the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7th, is a powerful tale of love and loss, longing and despair, and the remnants of hope. Original and poignant, it re-examines Zionism’s somewhat naïve myths and heroes, effortlessly floating in time and space, to tell a tale that is at once very specific and even intimate, and yet truly universal.

​

​

Critical Praise

 

Orna Landau’s book Last Stop: Paradise deals with the painful reality of war, and offers much more than a lament or a political vision; It is a work that touches, in clever and inventive ways, the heart of our existence after "what happened", and flows naturally between genres and mixes times and spaces, reality, fantasy and legend… “On the day the wild drones came upon them, and then the thunder bombs, followed by the all-consuming fire, and everything that happened and earned the name 'what happened', she stopped writing." Sometime after the end of the war, the heroine Shira, who lost her son in the war, her daughter and perhaps her husband - decides to rebel. To maintain her sanity, and not to be swept away into the peace offered by the "protective government" with the "protective leader"… The solution that Shira finds to escape the emptiness of chaos is a renewed fulfillment of the pioneer Zionist vision and its values: working the land, the collective, settlement of the border areas. She moves to the southern district of Kalaniot, to the settlement of Paradise, located near what is called “the wall”. After the war ended, “there is nothing” behind the wall, as the leader said (if so, why is a wall necessary?), maybe only jackals and rats and alligators, howls (of children? weapons? owls?) maybe even demons. No one knows what is or isn't beyond it, because the wall is a symbol of separation not only between populations (us and them. The Gazans?), but between the “sane” reality and some repressed, hideous and infected thing… Beyond the impressive stitching of political reality, the book's charming quality is the elusiveness and fluidity between times and places, between reality and fantasy, which gradually transform each other, gradually blur. The Israeli past, present and future thus become a continuum, in which the ideal and the prose, the disasters and the redemptions are used in a distinctive mixture, in a way that does not lead to firm conclusions; On the contrary, the wild combinations are what give the book its uniqueness as a multi-layered work, and at the same time flowing and readable.

Prof. Hana Hertzig, Israel Hayom

​​

Following a national disaster, the nature of which remains unclear until the end of the novel, Shira decides to leave her home and husband in Tel Aviv and move to the Kalaniot District. In this district, located on the outskirts of the country, there are three settlements… Shira's desired destination is the settlement called Paradise. Paradise is a kind of kibbutz or community where a group of older individuals try to revive the early days of Zionism as they once were… Shira parks her car in the Paradise parking lot, deposits her phone at the reception, and joins the group. She wakes up early every morning to work alongside everyone else, occasionally dances at the lively evening dances where these new pioneers find solace, converses with Aharon David, the spiritual leader of the group whose words she drinks thirstily. She befriends some members of the group and is wary of others. Will Shira be able to ease her pain? The memory of the national disaster? The memory of the personal disaster that befell her and is related to the fate of her son Uri (the exact nature of which remains unclear almost until the end)? Will the new pioneers succeed in recreating the early days of Zionism? Its enthusiasm? Its faith? Its defiance?.. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that something has indeed happened in the novel’s reality, something similar to what happened on October 7th. As a result, a wall was erected between us and the other side (although no one knows exactly what happened on the other side until the end). The leader tightened his grip on the people and placed all responsibility for the disaster on the military. Somehow, those who joined the group yearn for renewal through agricultural work, yet exactly how they will be able to achieve this goal, remains unclear… One thing, though, is clear: the novel was written out of deep concern and care for Israeli society. We are in a time of crisis, and everyone who loves and is tied to Jewish-Israeli civilization is called to action… In a quarrel between Shira and her husband Jonathan, Jonathan argues that “all that ‘Zionism once more,’” as he called the renewed settlement in the Kalaniot District… seems outdated and ridiculous to him. “You can't restart Zionism any more than you can be a virgin again,” he says. In this argument, in which Jonathan loses hope and contemplates emigration, I side with Shira… The desire for a home does not have a statute of limitations. That is, the desire for a society, a language, a culture, and a piece of land where you feel at home. In the epilogue, Landau discusses the urgency with which the book was written following the events of October 7th... It offers important testimony to both the deep fracture we are currently experiencing and to the fact that people who care about the future of Israeli society are considering radical ideas for healing it.

Eric Glesner, Yedioth Aharonot

​

This is the first Israeli novel to address October 7th, which is referred to in the novel (either directly or as a very similar disaster) as “what happened.” In the story, the State of Israel “still exists, at least partially, despite what happened”... Shira, who is a writer, and Orna Landau, who is the author of this novel, draw on significant influences to sharpen the message. For example, Brecht... Brecht may be speaking about something that happened in another place, at another time, but the connection to the here and now in Israel is clear... Even without Landau revealing in the acknowledgments that “I realized that I would not find redemption unless 17 I could, out of the hatred and anger, the despair and mourning, build something new” – it is unquestionably clear that this book comes from the depths of those burning emotions and that unfathomable wound... Readers are required to decide whether the new paradise, depicted in vivid colors with a wall at its heart, is a dystopia or a utopia. And whether hope is lost, or the opposite is true. Assuming that all answers are correct makes the story both beautiful and heartening... The impossible yet inevitable duality of existence, both before and especially after “what happened”. And since Sartre is also invited to the party, and Shira recalls that hell is other people, perhaps this is the duality of existence itself, wherever it may be... This book is one enormous immense scream, which remains a scream even when whispered or implied, and even in the poetic moments that some characters deem unnecessary... The sense of urgency in the story propels and guides it well through bold paths that lead to a satisfying ending, in the non-ingratiating sense of the word, amid all the difficulties and obstacles surrounding it... Landau’s literary scream... is important and necessary, so long as Israel continues to exist.

Yaron Fried, Ma’ariv

​

Shira, the protagonist of Orna Landau’s novel, is a true heroine: in a reality of total despair, she carries a solitary flag of hope, driven by an almost desperate determination to do everything possible to transform her hatred and anger into something else, and to be reborn as a person with purpose, meaning, and a future... Landau conveys this terrifying sequence of events in an informative, simple, almost indifferent language, a tone that heightens the atmosphere of dread that pervades the novel. One of her notable stylistic choices is to begin many chapters with the same sentence: “Fields lie far and wide, from horizon to edge”, the opening line of the song The Wheat Grows Again. The recurring line is read differently each time - with wonder, hope, and later boredom, sadness, and emptiness - and it develops into some kind of background music for the book.

Tslil Avraham, Ha’aretz

 

A marvelous book of powerful prose. Landau has succeeded in capturing the spirit of the times in Israel after October 7th, with captivating characters with philosophical depth. Weeks have elapsed since I read it, and the book remains with me.

Sahrah Blau, author and journalist

​​