Summer Reading Project, BookLikes Satellite

We are usually taught that World War I began, officially, on 28 July 1914 and ended 11 November 1918. History texts and teachers like neat dates; it makes testing easier. When we look closer, the reality is a lot more messy. The Balkan Wars (a significant contributing factor) ran from 1912 to 1913. The French had been pissed off at the Germans, especially the Prussians, since 1870. And the “war” didn’t end for everyone in November of 1918. We we call World War I (and World War II) were really a bunch of conflicts that all blended into one huge, bloody, sprawl. The reason I bring all this up is because Suzanne Joinson’s novel, The Photographer’s Wife, gives us a closer look at the further disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the Palestinian Mandate after the official end of hostilities. The characters in this book give us a ring side seat as the British try to sort things out, Arabs try to claim independence, and Jews, Armenians, and other ethnic minorities try to hold on to what they’d managed to claim so far. The Photographer’s Wife is also about memory and how some things can never be forgotten...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.