The Search for Sana

Author is a multiple prize winner and nominee who has previously sold over 935,000 copies of his books worldwide. 20,000 copies sold in all languages worldwide. Portuguese edition of the novel was a bestseller. Nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. ‘a bold investigation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.’ – Michael Eaude, Tikkun -- Publisher: Parthian Books
In 1996 Richard Zimler published the novel The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon to great praise. The New York Times was favourable towards it, as was the Guardian, and it seems to have rarely been out of print since. Amongst its fans was a dancer from Brazil who approached Zimler in a Perth hotel while he was on a promotional tour in 2000 for a subsequent book. She was on her own tour with her dance company. Zimler signed a copy of the book to his new friend ‘Helena’ following a couple of brief but memorable exchanges over hotel breakfasts. Or did he? Thus starts The Search for Sana. The story that follows explores Helena, Sana, and a whole host of characters, family members and associated folk, both good and bad. This is – let me make no bones about this – a brilliant book. The journey that Zimler takes his reader on is one filled with love, friendship, terror, confusion; it ties in his own life, contemporary history, and somehow also generations of struggle. It’s an incredible achievement. It is, in many ways, a true story, while remaining fiction. Zimler's flitting between truth and fiction and the blurring of both is what makes this book so special and so clever and increases the sucker punch it delivers to its readers. Exploring the facts: Zimler did publish a novel called The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, and he did publish a book called The Angelic Darkness, which he promoted on tour in early 2000. He also did organise the literary conference in 2001 that features in this novel, albeit fleetingly. In 1982 a Parisian restaurant called Chez Jo Goldenberg did get attacked by the Abu Nidal Organisation, and two teenage boys were tragically murdered in Tekoa in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2001. So much else in these pages didn’t happen. But it could. This is the crux of the book. What Zimler does so cleverly is to use fiction to explore history, geography, politics, and to travel through time. This special book is reminiscent of the late and great W. G. Sebald’s final novel, Austerlitz, in which a narrator travels throughout Europe in the pursuit of Austerlitz, a man once met by chance. Like Zimler, Sebald used fiction to explore real places and real stories, and used the life of an individual to shed light on a much larger historical story. What Zimler does with The Search for Sana ties together generations of Palestinian-Israeli relationships, and highlights the nuance, complexity and humanity of a situation that has impacted on millions of lives. He does all of this while also being entirely transparent about the process of writing a book and the role of a writer – even jumping between first and third person to significant effect. The Search for Sana is one of four of Zimler’s books receiving a current revival due to a re-press by Welsh publisher Parthian, alongside publication of his latest novel, The Incandescent Thread. Zimler’s talent as a writer is clear and his ability to weave the personal with the social, the significant with the trivial, and the truth with fiction is apparent. The Search for Sana is one of the best books looking at global politics at the turn of the twenty-first century and deserves to be read and interrogated by readers en masse. -- Liam Nolan @ www.gwales.com