Beaufort

With a critical eye and an empathetic heart, Ron Leshem dishes up a wholly human story that takes place in conditions that are anything but. Fast-paced and brutally honest, unflinching and uproariously funny, Beaufort has been hailed - not only by critics but by the generation of soldiers who served in Lebanon during Israeli occupation - as the true voice of that sobering period.

Written as the diary of Liraz (Erez) Liberti, the head of a commando team stationed at Beaufort during the last winter of Israeli occupation, Beaufort is a revolutionary and potent look at the futility of war and death, and the courage it takes to put an end to it.This is not a story of war, but of retreat.This is a story with no enemy, only an amorphous entity that fires missiles from the surrounding mountains. And while thirteen young men propel the novel and give it life and colour, the real hero of Beaufort is fear: contagious, intoxicating, palpable fear, a word they forbid themselves from uttering. Beaufort is a devastating portrayal of a generation finding that the values and principles bestowed on them by their parents have betrayed them, and the terrifying nihilistic reality of Middle Eastern conflict.