‘Dinner at the Center of the Earth’ isa spy novel seton a battle ground
NATHAN Englander has called his new book a “turducken of a novel.”
At heart, “Dinner at the Center of the Earth” is the story of an American who becomes an Israeli spy, then becomes a traitor to Israel for noble reasons. But, Englander acknowledges, the story is more complicated than that.
“It’s in one sense a political thriller,” he said. “But it becomes a metaphysical, magical-realism sort of historical novel, and then it rolls into a love story. And when you’re in this love story, you find out you’re in an allegory.”
Englander will share the stage with Nicole Krauss on Monday in Houston, the first reading in the new season of Inprint’s Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. Because of the Wortham Center’s flood damage during Hurricane Harvey, Inprint has moved the reading to the Stude Concert Hall at Rice University.
It’s difficult to describe Englander’s novel without giving something away. There’s a delicious puzzle that becomes evident as it unfolds, and characters transform and surprise.
The story moves all over — Paris, Berlin, Capri — but it’s anchored by two characters who are both stuck in a kind of limbo. Prisoner Z, a captured spy, has languished for a dozen years in a prison cell in Israel’s Negev desert. He is “a disappeared, nameless American confined to a cell that doesn’t, on any written record, exist.”
Z writes letters of appeal to the General, a former prime minister clearly based on Ariel Sharon. But, unbeknownst to Z, the General has been in a coma for years. From his hospital bed near Tel Aviv, in a dreamlike unconscious state, he relives his battles and victories — a personal and political trip through Israel’s history and the failure of the peace process.
In alternating chapters, from their different states of confinement, Prisoner Z and the General recall the experiences that got them there. It becomes obvious that “Dinner at the Center of the Earth” is no ordinary spy novel.
“This book is so loaded,” Englander said. “I feel like people are going to not get past the cover without having an opinion.”
He is, after all, tackling the IsraelPalestinian conflict — a conflict he’s viewed in person, as a Jewish American who has lived in Jerusalem.
It was during his time in Israel when Englander saw how complicated the battle over territory is, with an unending cycle of vengeance and retribution.
“These two sides — it’s not the same reality,” he said. He realized that a Jewish person could stand on a hill in Jerusalem and recognize it as the holy Temple Mount, while a Palestinian could stand in the same place — “literally the same spot” — and view it as a different holy site, the Haram al-Sharif.
He sees the same sort of “simultaneous and opposite realities” emerging in the United States — the fact, for instance, that people looked at photos from the Obama and Trump inaugurations and disagreed about which event had the bigger crowd. “You can take two photos of two inaugurations, and you can decide which reality you live in.”
But this novel’s focus is squarely on the Middle East. The “center of the Earth” in Englander’s title refers to the tunnels that burrow beneath the Gaza Strip and beyond, allowing goods to be smuggled past borders underground.
“Right now, Israel is preparing for the next war,” he said. “Right now, Hamas is building their next set of missiles. It breaks my heart that it’s just again and again the same thing: the buildup, the war, the violence, the loss, the broken peace, the silence, and then everyone starts building again.”
But as weighty and political as “Dinner at the Center of the Earth” seems, it’s also a plot-driven pageturner. There’s a love story, some trickery and a few careening escapes from danger.
Prisoner Z isn’t smooth and spylike; this is no James Bond story. He makes mistakes, has doubts, falls in love and even enlists the help of his mother. Englander says he asked himself: “What if I were a spy? I’m so neurotic, I’d be telling my friends, I’d be worried, I’d be telling my mom. I wanted to write that kind of spy.”
He might not be smooth, and he might be a traitor to his adopted country. But he’s a character the reader will gladly follow — even if the path leads straight to prison.
senseit thriller.“It’s becomesa in politicalone But a magical-realismmetaphysical, sort of historical novel. And when you’re in this love story, you find out you’re in an allegory.” Nathan Englander