The Land Agent by J. David Simons

The Land Agent is a story of diaspora. In 1919, a young Polish Jew named Lev flees persecution while an idealistic Scottish woman looks to begin again. Like ‘new branches on to old vines,’ they have both chosen the Holy Land of Palestine. There they find a parcel of land that exists on no map. A strip of desert by a river, home to a Bedouin tribe, it is the essential connection to water that the new kibbutz needs to survive. Yet this land is coveted by aggressive developers.

The third novel in J. David Simons’ loose trilogy Glasgow to Galilee focuses on ideas of how the land and its people shape each other. Woven throughout is the story of Celia, the young Glaswegian Jewish woman and a founder of the kibbutz. Her letters home tell of the precarious life of the commune, and the gradual disillusionment of her socialist dream. Their crops wilt for lack of water as these young pioneers thirst for freedom.

As tensions between Jews and Arabs rise, and riots are imminent, a terrifying earthquake highlights the fragility of this new-old state. The reader is told of a beautiful country, but one short of resources, riven with divisions and laden with the weight of history. Lev’s words have lost none of their resonance: ‘Land is an emotional issue in Palestine.’