The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land

'A beautiful debut by a deeply humane writer. Every story is a vivid world unto itself, intensely felt, and often revelatory' NICOLE KRAUSS'In these wise, capacious, achingly beautiful stories, Omer Friedlander maps the hidden geography of the human heart like a young Chekhov' ANTHONY MARRA

A divorced con artist and his young daughter sell empty bottles of 'holy' air to credulous tourists. A Lebanese Scheherazade enchants three young soldiers in a bombed-out Beirut radio station with her nightly tales. An Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son, a soldier killed in Gaza. A lonely girl living in the desert city of Beersheba falls in love with a Bedouin boy, but he has a secret.

From the limestone alleyways of Jerusalem to the sun-soaked Negev Desert and the sprawling orange groves of Jaffa, The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land turns fairytales on their head, weaving together the comic and absurd with the quietly devastating, in this imaginative and poignant collection of stories.