Jonathan Wilson

A gripping historical novel of sex, love, and justice in the tinderbox of British Mandate Palestine, by the acclaimed author of A Palestine Affair In 1933, Ivor Castle, an Oxford-educated Jew, arrives in Palestine to take up a position as assistant to the defense counsel for the two men accused of murdering Haim Arlosoroff, a figure whose tactics to get Jews out of Hitler's Germany and into Palestine may have been controversial enough to get him killed. Ivor, an innocent to the politics of the case, falls into bed and deeply in love with Tsiona, a free-spirited painter who sketched the accused men in a Jerusalem cafe on the night of the murder and may be a key witness. As Ivor learns the hard way about the violence simmering just under the lid of British colonial rule, Wilson dazzles with his mastery of the sun-baked scenery and the subtleties of the warring agendas in Palestine. Ivor moves between the crime scene in Tel Aviv and the maze of Jerusalem, between the mounting mysteries around this notorious legal case and clandestine lovemaking in Tsiona's tiny studio in Safed. In the end, he must discover where his heart lies--whether he cares more for the law or the truth, whether he is an Englishman or a Jew, with whom and where he belongs.

Soccer fans love to argue about the tactics a manager puts into play, and this fascinating study traces the world history of tactics, from modern pioneers right back to the beginning, where chaos reigned. Along the way, author Jonathan Wilson, an erudite and detailed writer who never loses a sense of the grand narrative sweep, takes a look at the lives of the great players and thinkers who shaped the game, and discovers why the English in particular have proved themselves so “unwilling to grapple with the abstract.” This is a modern classic of soccer writing that followers of the game will dip into again and again.