Nir Baram

Nir Baram (1976) is one of the most well known writers of Israel. He published four novels and his nonfiction appeared in magazines and newspapers, like The New Yorker and NRC Handelsblad.

Interview about his latest book At Night’s End

Nir Baram is one of the most exciting voices of contemporary Israeli literature. He is actually somewhat of a superstar: his non-fiction appeared all across the globe. In these works he tirelessly describes how one lives in a country that is torn apart between two sides. For one year he travelled through the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This resulted in the international best-selling book A Land Without Borders.

In some ways, Baram’s work is a companion piece to that of Etgar Keret, Israel’s other star writer. But where Keret is a master of the slightly surreal, and mostly writes short stories, Baram has his feet firmly on the ground, and offers a more realistic approach. Both writers manage to paint a deeply human portrait of contemporary life in Israel and Palestine.

Baram’s new novel is called At Night’s End. It tells the story of Jonatan, a writer. One day he wakes up in a hotel room. He has no clue what has happened, or how he got there in the first place. To add insult to injury, people tell him that he has been telling the lie that his best friend Joel has died. Baram then takes the reader on a journey through Jonatan’s past. We learn of his friendship with Joel and of his upbringing in the city of Jerusalem. We meet his dysfunctional family. He constantly bickers with his older brother, and his mother gets terminally ill. At Night’s End is a parable that tells the tale of living in an extremely intense culture.