A work of contemporary fiction, Chains of Sand by Jemma Wayne is a timely and important portrayal of a realm of Middle Eastern conflict made familiar to most of us in the West through the distorted lens of news and current affairs coverage, a lens too often smeared with the Vaseline of prejudice, its purported wide angle little more than a pinhole. Perhaps it is only through the lived experience of people to some degree inside the context of Israeli/ Palestinian tensions and conflict that our awareness can broaden and deepen. Set against the backdrop of another looming conflict with Gaza, Chains of Sand offers the reader a chance to share in the lives of an endearing cast of characters rendered as vivid and as real as the reader’s intimate friends, and through this cast, to consider perspectives from within what is widely considered the aggressor nation: Israel.

The architecture of the narrative is in essence simple, two young men hankering for a better life: Iraqi-born Israeli, Udi, craving a life in London; and Jewish Londoner, Daniel, bent on moving to Tel Aviv. Neither is religious, they represent a generation pulling away from orthodoxy, yet they are each influenced by and wrestle with the beliefs, customs and rituals of the Jewish faith as it impacts on their lives through their families and friends.

The story begins with Udi, fresh from the army, unemployed, listless and frustrated, his application to reside in Britain a source of constant anxiety and hope. Despite the third person narration, the reader is beside him, in his home with his mother and father, out in the streets of Ramat Gan with its cosmopolitan vibe, caught in the mayhem of the traffic, hanging out with his friends on the beach or in a cafe, and sharing in his flashback memories of fighting in Gaza. Udi is a young man haunted and determined to rise above it.

He is also is a man loyal to the Israeli state and keen to defend it. Yet through lessons learned from his own troubled past, Udi understands the need to keep the human actor present in descriptions of conflict. In questioning an army friend’s statement that his brother was killed by a bomb, and not a bomber, Udi states, “The semantics allow him to hold a whole people to blame and salvage at least some opportunity to put things right: a tooth for a tooth.” Yet it is Udi’s unreflective habit of rolling bits of shrapnel in his palm, “like prayer beads,” that confronts the reader with the realisation that in Israel, war is in danger of replacing religion as a system of faith.

The reader is soon in London and introduced to the headstrong, self-analytical, angst-filled and not entirely likeable city banker Dan, the narrative switching to first person to fully exploit his egocentric introspections. Through Dan, Judaic believing and practice in London in all its variants is depicted with wit and warmth, no better conveyed than when Dan describes his father’s consternation over changing attitudes to the customs of faith, the same father who helped found a cross-cultural London dialogue group. “Perhaps this is why he speaks now like a man clutching desperately to a stream of water escaping from a tap that he himself turned on.”

Written in clear, unsaturated prose, the narration remains close, calm and measured throughout, the story’s horrors, tragedies and triumphs depicted with just enough detail and never overplayed. There are echoes of Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question, both novels delving into the complexity of being Jewish in London. Yet refreshingly, Wayne’s Dan lacks the intense and almost stereotypically neurotic introspection of Jacobson’s protagonist. Instead, and especially through the eyes of her female characters, Wayne conveys the realities that confront ordinary people struggling to exist and find work and love and fulfilment in cities prone to attack, where prejudice can turn to violence with little provocation.

Both Udi’s and Dan’s mothers reflect more orthodox perspectives, their anxieties those of any mother agonising over the welfare of the son she is about to lose. It is through the two men’s sisters and girlfriends that the reader is presented with progressive, sophisticated, complex responses to a Jewish identity in crisis. Dan’s sister Gaby is emphatic that she is British first, and Jewish second; that in matters of identity, nationality is paramount. Dan’s girlfriend, talented artist Urli, speaks of the diversity and elusiveness of truth. And Udi’s sister Avigail, wife, mother and daughter too, is a cross-cultural intellectual feminist activist campaigning for peace and taking risks with her own life to achieve it.

A parallel narrative takes the reader back in time, before the wall went up in Jerusalem, a time when a naïve young Jewish girl snuck into the Arabic quarter of the city searching for inspiration and finding love. It is an intoxicating, acutely observed depiction of the Romeo and Juliet scenario, for Dara’s love is surely forbidden, Kaseem’s just as surely doomed. Here, Chains of Sand becomes almost a whispered narrative of the immutable social strictures that separate Muslim Arab from Jew.

The Muslim Arab perspective is again explored with the softest of brushstrokes in Dan’s girlfriend, Safia, who serves as his moral stanchion, quietly goading, quizzing, testing, as he defends his prejudices, and his decisions.

The female characters in Chains of Sand are positioned somewhat in the shade cast by the male protagonists, yet this shade is not obscure. It is shade made all the richer for being beyond the harsh rays of the stark either/or realities of Udi and Dan. In the shade are the textures, the nuances, the depths, and the deeper the reader ventures into its recesses, the closer she is to the truth.

Chains of Sand is a brave book, one that reveals the complexities of being Jewish and of being Israeli, of identifying with Israel as a nation, as a concept, as a home for the Jewish people, complexities hampered by a modern zeitgeist that is wont to be blindly anti-Israel. Chains of Sand challenges a viewpoint unable to see a polyglot cosmopolitan nation struggling to grow and understand itself, whilst fully cognizant that this same nation is blinkered by the politics of aggression towards its neighbours, a nation apt to stumble into overreaction through fear of losing itself. It does the reader no harm to explore perspectives born of the lived experience of those we may apparently oppose. For that alone, I salute the author. ( )

Chains of Sand by Jemma Wayne is a novel about the recent Gaza War. Ms. Wayne was shortlisted for The Guardian’s 2016 Not the Booker Prize.

Udi is a 26 year old Israeli man of Iraqi origin. Even though he served in the IDF, Udi is frequently treated as an unwanted entity in Israeli society by those who don’t know him.

Daniel, a London banker in his late 20s feels a strong connection to Israel. Despite his family’s pleads and fears, Daniel plans to leave London and create a life in Israel.

Dara, a young Jewish teenager falls in love with Kaseem, a Muslim living in Jerusalem. Both Dara and Kaseem love art and understand each other’s desire to create.

Chains of Sand by Jemma Wayne tells of the recent Gaza War with a bunch of loosely connected stories. Ms. Wayne concentrated on the families of Israelis and Palestinians affected by the conflict from near or far.

The common denominator for all those characters is the feeling of displacement and disconnect. They are disillusioned with their lives and want something more meaningful from life than what their lives currently are.

The author writes about the challenges of living in the region for both Jews and Arabs, especially for young people who struggle with identity and family. Most people in their 20s, who are starting to discover individuality and how to balance their wants against the families’ wishes struggle with their decisions. On top of that, add the daily pressure of living in a political pressure plate.

The author does not shy away from the emotional price one has to pay living in a war zone. The narrative is beautiful, easy to read and understand despite the complexity of the issues.

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Jemma Wayne was nominated for the women's fiction prize last year, so I requested her new one on netgalley. The novel follows a young Londoner thinking of making aliya to Israel, a young Iranian -Israeli going the other way, and a young woman having a relationship with a Muslim in East Jerusalem. It's an interesting take on the conflict in Israel at a personal level, encompassing individuals in the IDF, a protestor against the state and various shades in between. Beyond a short prologue, she doesn't attempt to represent the Palestinian perspective first hand, but does acknowledge (particularly in the relationship across the religious divide) how hard it is to maintain idealism in the face of practical problems like unemployment. Characters change their opinions, support the state whilst questioning policies, and attempt to avoid politics altogether. I hope I don't read to have my own opinions confirmed to me - a good read on that basis, and more. ( )

'Chains of Sand' opens with a girl trapped in the rubble of her house.

This perfectly constructed chapter illustrates the key themes of the book in slightly less than two full pages: loyalty, fear, peace, conflict, violence, feminism, extremism, the quest for knowledge, and the senseless brutality of every life lost. This girl, we will later learn, is Farah. She is a young girl trapped by a culture which requires her to obey and a father with a heartfelt quest. She is at once intensely symbolic of the young trapped in conflicted regions and deeply, vitally individual, providing one of many threads running through this carefully woven tapestry of life.

What's it about?

Udi, a veteran of the Israeli army, wants a new life in England. Daniel, a Jewish investment banker from London, wants to move to Israel. What drives someone to leave their family and country behind? How far does your religion or your nationality determine your identity?

Years earlier, Jewish Dara and Muslim Kaseem begin a love affair, but can it survive against the bleak reality of racism in Israel and the entrenched hatred behind it?

As each story develops, Wayne explores racism, anti-Semitism, the search for truth and the rush to extremism, always balancing the individuals' yearnings against the harsh realities of their lives and the needs and desires of their families.

What's it like?

Beautiful. Dark. Tragic. It's impossible to read Kaseem's story without empathising with his predicament, feeling his pain, even as he hurts Dara badly. The same is true of all the characters. Wayne paints their motivations, their hopes, dreams and limitations so deftly that we can feel the tug of the invisible barriers holding them back - their cultures, their religions - even while we wish them to be bold, to step forward. And Wayne, having been a journalist, is not naive: stepping forward has its harsh realities.

Daniel is undoubtedly the most interesting character. Dara is merely young and romantic; Kaseem perhaps playing a role he has heard others play; the end of their story is sad but ultimately familiar and predictable. Udi's desire to leave Israel is more understandable than Daniel's desire to move into a war zone - for the contemporary historical timeframe is the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict and there is a good chance he will be summoned into battle.

Daniel's voice enters the novel abruptly - 'I don't know', he begins, the only character given direct access to the reader through a first-person narrative, and he really doesn't know. Why isn't his life in London enough for him? Why does he yearn to live in a country almost synonymous with turmoil? He is a modern Jew who keeps kosher but can't explain why and assumes his attraction to good friend Safia cannot develop since she is a Muslim and would naturally want to marry a Muslim man. His refusal to really try to understand his own ideas and motivations is a source of great frustration to Safia and to his sister, Gaby, both of whom grapple with their sense of identity and the extent to which their religion is a part of them. I love that Wayne has Daniel drawn to Orli, who he seems to see as a simpler, easier choice and 'fit' with his blurry concept of self, but the final chapters of the book suggest that she may ultimately challenge him more than Safia...

Final thoughts

This is a moving story which encourages readers to examine the dangers of adopting a simplistic 'us and them' narrative in which the Other becomes the Enemy. Wayne's men are easily polarised and mobilised to fight for an unexamined ideal. Her women sift the truth, searching for a way forward that involves recogition of complexity and shades of grey. They suffer, but continue trying to learn and spread truth. The men, being so closed to shades of grey, learn nothing. Udi endures a loss that he fails to attribute to a cultural misunderstanding, persisting instead in laying the whole blame on another's shoulders. This, Wayne suggests, is how conflict continues, and I concluded this book wishing that more women were in positions of power in Israel and Gaza!

This is a beautifully written tale where the smallest details work to support the whole and it inspired me to go away and read up about the 2014 Arab-Israeli conflict. I shall certainly be hunting out the author's previous novel, 'After Before', which was longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction and the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award.

Many thanks to MidasPR and the publishers for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ( )