Sand Devil by Michael B. Oren

The heat of the Negev Desert is captured in this collection of three novellas. An escaped murderer holds a young woman hostage in House of Bondage. In The Maestro of Yerucham, a Russian violinist who has survived the Nazis and the Soviet regimes finds a young girl he believes to be the heir to his talents. And in Sand Devil, the adolescent son of a fundamentalist family discovers the terrifying secrets of the desert.

MICHAEL B. OREN was born in the United States and immigrated to Israeli in 1979, and today lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, and as advisor to the Israel delegation to the UN and to the government of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. An historian with degrees from Princeton and Columbia, he has written extensively on the Middle East, including Six Days of War, and most recently, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776-Present, a New York Times bestseller. His commentaries appear in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Commentary, and The Wall Street Journal.

“The desert is an unremitting presence, imprisoning the main characters, but also providing a means for tier redemption. The book is inhabited by people living on the margins of society who must find a way to recast their lives… The sand devil of the title is the whiling desert sandstorm that blasts through whatever lies in its path… the book’s prose is very strong, to match its desert setting.”
THE JERUSALEM POST

Bornstein’s “fiction reveals a craftsman with a quick eye for the landscape and the cityscape of the Negev and a promising ability to show ordinary people chained to the madness and passions of their lives.”
THE JERUSALEM REPORT