Nathan Englander's Dinner at the Center of the Earth - Implausible Paths for Peace

"Dinner at the Center of the Earth" is Nathan Englander's brilliant new novel centers around the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians.  Englander's clever and calculating novel, in addition to being a political & historic novel is also a love story between Shira, an Israeli spy and a Palestinian spy.  There's also prisoner Z whose hapless imprisonment serves as ground zero from which other narratives arise.  Z's duplicity endangering Israel is captured by Shira who had captured his heart. Z's held without charges or communication to the outside world.  His confinement is a punitive purgatory.  His only contact is with his unnamed guard whose mother Ruthie secured him this top secret job.  Ruthie was the right hand assistant to the General known for his ruthless retribution for any attacks on Israelis.  The General has been in a decades long coma caused during a destruction mission that killed a mother and her children in their home.   The General's voice while in limbo chronicles his life and his crucial role in orchestrating battles against Palestine.  Each story and their interconnections are riveting.  The apex of this heart rendering novel is Shira's hopeless love story which echoes an essential need to compromise, meet in the middle and come to the table to negotiate peace.  The ephemeral hope for an end to bloodshed seems possible when people come face to face.  Unfortunately, the cyclical, never ending killings is imbedded in an inherent system of killing in mankind and man's firm conviction of retaliation that thrives eternally.  Englander, a Pulitzer Prize nominated writer eloquently eulogizes our fate.  " Once the invasion begins - There's no knowing how and when, or even if the bloodshed will ever end.  Only that both sides will battle for justice, killing each other in the name of those freshly killed, honoring the men who died avenging those, who by then, died avenging."  This astonishing novel, as with Englander's other works conveys  mistrust, hatred and violence.  "Dinner at the Center...." implores the the most violent and steady escalation of war but it also poses the implausible but possible hope for a resolve to end enmity.