There is also some overwriting, where three descriptions of something are provided when surely two (or one!) would suffice. To wit, when the two lovers first kiss, proverbial fireworks break out: “I lost my grasp of time, or perhaps time had lost its linearity. When had we started kissing: two minutes ago, two hours ago? I didn’t have the faintest idea. The beginning had slipped into oblivion and the only certainty was that we couldn’t stop.” When they disengage, Goodrich writes, “We looked at each other for an eternity, or maybe just a breath.” One or the other. A few pages later, she writes, “Maybe I’d had too much to drink, though my full glass was proof to the contrary.” Was the part about the proof necessary? Nonetheless, the epistolary portions of the book really stand out—such that one wonders what could have been had the book been largely an epistolary novel. As you read the letters, the plight of Heddi and Pietro cannot fail to resonate, if for no other reason than doomed love affairs are a hallmark of human life. Plus, the natural tension in such situations is nicely amplified by the cultural conflict between Heddi the American and Pietro the Italian. HarperVia’s selection of this text could bode well for efforts to increase the number of Italian books reaching American bookstores . Moreover, books written in Italian by women that are translated into English continue to lag books written by Italian men. It is promising that HarperVia chose this book by a woman author as its first envoy into the publishing world. Jeanne Bonner West Hartford, Connecticut Isabella Hammad The Parisian New York. Grove Press. 2019. 576 pages. MOST NOVELS ABOUT Palestine focus on the events following the Nakba (the catastrophe, in Arabic) of 1948. Isabella Hammad chooses to focus on the neglected pre-Nakba time period, before Palestinians became defined by Israel in the global media. In the process, she gives us literature that, to quote another novelist of the diaspora , Hala Alyan, “can play a powerful role in emotionally translating political events.” The book tells the story of Midhat Kamal, the son of a well-to-do Palestinian textile merchant who, in 1914, sends his son off to Montpellier, France, to study medicine and to escape conscription into the Ottoman army on the eve of World War I. We follow Midhat (whose character was inspired by the author’s own great-grandfather ) through the triumphs, revelations, and disappointments of his years in France and then his reluctant return to the city of his birth, Nablus, the setting for the last two-thirds of the book and itself a fascinating character. Throughout, this bon vivant is at the sidelines of the dramatic action of the day (the Great War, the beginnings of Palestinian resistance) but continues to grapple with his feelings of alienation, with the difficulty of defining himself while those around him insist on doing the defining, and with what little control he really has over his own fate. A vast cast of characters joins Midhat , and the author deftly handles them all. Betrayal—between nations as well as individuals—recurs throughout, but redemption is not always withheld, and other balancing acts rotate into view: between knowledge and power, Books in Review Berit Glanz Pixeltänzer Frankfurt am Main. Schöffling. 2019. 250 pages. BERIT GLANZ IS ONE of Germany ’s brightest young stars. In a year where young novelists are dominating prize lists, including the German Book Award shortlist, Glanz’s excellent debut novel, Pixeltänzer, stands out. Glanz has won some early awards for her writing , but her main gig is as a scholar and translator of Scandinavian literature. Her debut novel does not touch on her scholarly concerns, but it feels nevertheless acute and well observed. The title, combining “pixels” and “dancer,” points to the mixture that dominates the novel, a tale of two lives: of a fictional protagonist, Elizabeth (nommée Beta), and of a historical artist and dancer named Lavinia Schulz. Lavinia Schulz lived in the Weimar Republic and was an innovative artist, combining dance with a creation of large, heavy masks. Her masks were recently...