Sebastian Faulks\u2019s latest book focuses on the most irreconcilable geopolitical struggle of our age, the Israel-Palestine conflict. While \u201cthe sound of mortar and machine gun, the collision of flesh and metal\u201d are integral to Faulks\u2019s best known works, such as Birdsong, in his 17th\u00a0novel the military presence is a\u00a0peacekeeping one. It\u2019s 1946 and infantry officer Philip Deval, who saw action in Normandy, is deployed to the Holy Land to take part in maintaining Britain\u2019s mandate in Palestine. Initially Philip is second in command of a battalion overseeing febrile relationships between Jewish and Arab communities. Britain\u2019s profound failures and manipulation in the region, and the imminence of its disastrous departure from the territory, come under scrutiny.<\/p>\n
While able to drum up motivation and cheer for the men in his battalions, privately Philip wrestles with inner melancholy. He is \u201cshrouded\u201d in a \u201cloneliness \u2026 that insulates him from\u00a0the world\u201d. Experiences on the battlefield and other, slowly elucidated tragedies have led to his pessimistic bent. Much of what Philip observes in the Middle East, and his \u201cforeboding\u201d sense of its intractable problems, only\u00a0confirms his despairing sense of\u00a0human nature. It also underlines his\u00a0ambivalence towards notions of\u00a0divine\u00a0benevolence.<\/p>\n
double quotation markThe lamenting tone of the title reflects a work mourning seeming certainties<\/p>\n
In Jerusalem, Philip and some of his men find themselves in a raucous bar. They jostle along among multicultural crowds, those \u201cwith yarmulkes, tarbushes \u2026 barehead Armenians and Greeks \u2026 [all] playing dice and cards in a mix of tongues\u201d. Philip knows that \u201csoon they would [all] be killing each other \u2026 Humans had worked out the movements of the planets and prised apart the indivisible atom; they cured mysterious diseases and found a new way, by trade, of making themselves richer than the sum of their possessions \u2026 But a group of closely related people in a fertile landscape couldn\u2019t find a way to coexist.\u201d<\/p>\n
This inability to coexist does, indeed, frequently erupt into shocking\u00a0violence and inevitable reprisals. Faulks captures these with\u00a0his typically steady and unblinking attention, in scenes where\u00a0both the seriousness of his research and his instinct for affecting fictive detail is clear. Not long after Philip\u2019s arrival in\u00a0the region, Zionist paramilitaries bomb the King David Hotel, location of\u00a0the headquarters of\u00a0the Palestine police and the British administration. While helping to rescue survivors from\u00a0the debris, \u201cin\u00a0a\u00a0Remington [typewriter] that Philip lifted clear, there were three severed female fingers jammed between the keys\u201d.<\/p>\n
Faulks\u2019s plots often cultivate friendships formed in duress. Here, Matthew Kilvert, a priest attached to\u00a0the peacekeeping mission, has a \u201cgenial energy\u201d. He\u2019s fantastically enthusiastic about staging a Christmas\u00a0production, cast with officers and locals of all backgrounds, of The Importance of Being Earnest. His uproarious Lady Bracknell becomes the talk of the town. Matthew\u00a0forms an enduring closeness with Philip; their dialogue often glitters with an\u00a0easy, youthful humour and they are\u00a0able to share opposing views of what it means to have faith with an instructive conviviality and curiosity. There is a beautiful, strangely rendered moment when Matthew thinks he has had a vision of\u00a0Christ. Philip listens to Matthew\u2019s retelling of\u00a0the encounter with quiet\u00a0interest.<\/p>\n
A different friendship also shapes Philip\u2019s progress in the novel. With postwar employment opportunities limited, after demobbing Philip retrains as a French teacher and takes up a post at a girls\u2019 boarding school where he and music mistress Frances Darwood \u2013 as stiff as Philip is wont to be \u2013 strike up a delicate and important confidence. Over evenings listening to recordings of Ravel and Bach, the two gradually share stories of their pasts and the historical forces that have shaped them. This process proves especially harrowing for Frances. Alongside Philip\u2019s detailed recounting of his time in the Holy Land and the desolate realities of weary postwar Britain, Frances\u2019s horrific wartime recollections contribute to the panoramic ambitions of the novel. Faulks is deft in the management of\u00a0his ample material, throwing in the\u00a0odd, energising shift in narrative perspective too \u2013 an echo of the more sustained polyphony of A Week in December<\/a>. There is a lightness and unpredictability in the movement between stories and periods, a kind of\u00a0deliberate structural restiveness that is of a piece with Philip\u2019s psychic\u00a0disquiet. This mobility in the organisation of the story culminates in\u00a0some thrillingly clever late-stage plot developments that are every bit\u00a0as\u00a0dramatic as the concluding sections\u00a0of Faulks\u2019s 2007 novel, Engleby<\/a>.<\/p>\n While characteristically expansive in its scope, at its core Farewell to Eden is about disillusionment and morally compromised nations, peoples and individuals. The lamenting tone of the title \u2013 and indeed of the text at large \u2013 reflects a work mourning seeming certainties or easy categorical distinctions. It is a novel that asks us what we might do when unavoidably faced with our own imperfection and fallibility, and is wise and sober in its refusal to trumpet answers.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789381454_119_500.jpg\")
<\/p>\n