Archive - April 24, 2024

  The Tales of Bismuth: Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948 By Jamie Kirkpatrick (Tunisia 1970-72) Independently Published March 2024 250 pages $4.99 (Kindle); $21.00 (Paperback); $33.98 (Hardcover) • • •  The Tales of Bismuth is the sequel to Jamie Kirkpatrick’s debut novel, This Salted Soil: The Battle for Tunisia, 1942-1943. In that novel, Kirkpatrick (Tunisia, 1970-72) introduced his readers to Declan Shaw, a young Irish journalist who is based in Tunisia and assigned to cover the Allied North African campaign against Nazi Germany. Upon completion of that journalistic assignment, Shaw goes to Palestine to cover events unfolding there. He arrives in the waning days of the British Mandate and begins to understand the complexities of of life in Palestine, the complexities of relations between Palestinians and Jews, as well as the complexities of the heart. Shaw strives to report on events as a neutral observer, an almost impossible perspective to maintain given the . . .