Talking to the Enemy Stories Author:Avner Mandelman "Mandelman's stories veer from heartbreaking to hilarious, and all of them depict Israel's desperate fragility and the horrific lengths to which its citizens must go to survive."-New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)"[Mandelman] is a cruder writer than Nathan Englander or David Bezmozgis or Todd Hasak-Lowy.But Mandelman s material... more » is richer, and he tells it with more urgency."-New York Magazine"Complicates the underside of Israeli culture, teasing out the roots of violence and prejudice in this alternately dark and humorous collection . . . With these agile, vernacular stories, Mandelman takes a clear-sighted yet empathetic view of a fraught nation."-Publishers WeeklyA New York Times Editor's Choice, winner of the I.J. Siegal Award for fiction, and featuring Best American Short Stories winners, Talking to the Enemy is an unforgettable collection of stories that "matters matters because it refuses to be easy" -Jerusalem Post. Born in Israel in 1947, Avner Mandelman served in the Israeli Air Force during the Six Day War and has for four decades split his time between Paris, California, and Canada. Mandelman's stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories (1995), The Journey Prize Stories (Canada, 2003), and the Pushcart Prize XX (1996).« less