Dinner at the Center of the Earth, Englander's second novel, is a riveting tale of a Jewish American who became an Israeli spy and then a traitor to his adopted country. The story jumps back and forth between the time Prisoner Z is being held in a secret Black Site in the Israeli Negev desert and 12 years prior in the buildup to his ultimate transgression and capture. As with so much of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is very little black-and-white but rather all manner of shades of gray, even among those to whom a clear-cut perspective would seem to be a given. And in this sense, much is not what it seems. What constitutes loyalty? Or betrayal? Or compromise versus protection, for that matter? At every juncture, the characters struggle with moral imperatives and shifting identities, both internal and external. Even the comatose General, a thinly veiled stand-in for former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is not a slam-dunk of unwavering patriotic consistency.
Englander is most highly regarded for his distinguished short story collections, the most recent of which is 2012's Pulitzer Prize finalist, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. In this tense narrative, he doesn't waste any time laying out the playing field: "Both sides will battle for justice, killing each other in the name of those freshly killed, honoring the men who died avenging those who, before them, died avenging." And the beat goes on …
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