BEAUFORT by Ron Leshem
Over 150,000 copies sold in Israel
Beaufort, a beautiful and deadly crusader fort in southern Lebanon, is a world of its own, an enclave in the heart of enemy territory where Israeli soldier-boys create a state with its own rules and its own unique, outrageous, brutal language.
With a critical eye and an empathetic heart, author Ron Leshem dishes up a wholly human story that takes place in conditions that are anything but. Fast-paced and brutally honest, unflinching and uproariously funny, BEAUFORT has been hailed – not only by critics but by the generation of soldiers who served in Lebanon during Israeli occupation – as the true voice of that sobering period.
Written as the diary of Liraz (Erez) Liberti, the head of a commando team stationed at Beaufort during the last winter of Israeli occupation, BEAUFORT is a revolutionary and potent look at the triviality of war and death, and the courage it takes to put an end to it. This is not a story of war, but of retreat. This is a story with no enemy, only an amorphous entity that drops bombs from the skies. And while thirteen young men propel the novel and give it life and color, the real hero of BEAUFORT is fear: contagious, intoxicating, palpable fear, a word they forbid themselves from uttering.
Ron Leshem (33), is a native of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. His novel BEAUFORT won the Sapir Prize – Israel’s top literary award – for 2006, as well as the Yitzhak Sadeh Prize for military literature.
From 1998 to 2002 Leshem served on the editorial board of Yediot Ahronot newspaper. Among his most notable achievements there was a series of articles from the field about the Intifada that gained widespread public attention. In 2002 he became deputy editor of Maariv newspaper and in 2006 joined the Channel Two television station as deputy director in charge of programming and special projects.
BEAUFORT is Ron Leshem’s first book. Joseph Cedar (“Time of Favor,” "Campfire”), is the recipient of the Silver Bear for his direction of the film version of BEAUFORT at the Berlin Film Festival 2007.
At present, Leshem is at work on his second novel.
‘Fiery and frank, this audacious debut about young Israeli soldiers stationed at the remote fort of Beaufort in southern Lebanon in 1999 is at heart a coming-of-age story… Charged with breathless urgency and told with life-affirming warmth, this is a surprisingly entertaining book … A must-read’
Daily mail
"Beaufort is an overwhelming book of rare power… Beaufort is first and foremost a great, electrifying novel of which there are few."
Le Nouvel Observateur
"a radical anti-war novel; a universal reflection about fear and defeat... The novel has a documentary power which is difficult to evade... It is not a war novel but a novel about retreat and a petition for the message that defeat can be much more strengthening than any victory bought with blood."
Der Spiegel
"A radical book of masterful language and great sensitivity"
NDR
"Beaufort: a title full of tenderness, romance and charm but misleading. Far from being pastoral, the book is one of those texts that take you by surprise….droll and harrowing, the author captures, through the squad of young soldiers, the singularities which make up the wealth and complexity of Israeli society."
Le Monde
"Ron Leshem's Beaufort is literature that gets under your skin… style that leaves no choice but to dive into the lives of the soldiers at Beaufort and suffer with them in order to know, ultimately, that war is neither heroic nor good but an experience whose intensity borders on inhumanity"
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Once in a generation an outstanding novel of war appears. The Red Badge of Courage, Her Privates We, All Quiet on the Western Front, A Farewell To Arms, The Naked and the Dead and Catch-22 are some that, rightly, will be read and re-read as long as books exist. To them we may well add Ron Leshem's Beaufort…
Beaufort will be the novel that in a century to come will best define Israel at war".
Tonight, South Africa
"In pungent and rhythmic writing, Leshem depicts a society which feels morally as well as physically besieged."
Le Figaro
"The novel is super-realistic, chaotic and fear stricken … Although it's Hebrew title is "If there is Paradise " it is actually hell in which the novel's heroes are living… Beaufort provokes the same shock as Kenaz's Infiltration did 20 years earlier … prophetic."
Liberation
"A sustained rhythm, sentences as if fired by a machine gun, a profusion of slang and color, Beaufort is a very good war novel. "
Le Figaro
"One of the most interesting appearances at the Salon du Livre … Beaufort signifies what it means to be 18 years old in Israel …"
Les Inrockuptibles
"He achieved something unusual -- - with the story of Beaufort, Ron Leshem also created a picture of present day Israel."
Die Zeit
‘An overnight literary sensation … it brilliantly evokes the nature of war … Beaufort is a comic, absurd and piercingly truthful story. This is an incredible debut novel’
Manchester Evening News
"Leshem is in favor for a new attitude of mind. He sees in the crusader castle Beaufort a symbol for the mental walling-in that Israel also physically presses ahead with since the second Intifada. He describes how menace, a constant feeling of not being wanted, takes over the mind and slowly saps up all decency."
Tagesspiegel
"A masterpiece. A huge success"
Radio France, Laurent Goumarre, France Culture, Minute/Dix
"Beaufort is a book about young soldiers who live in kind of a “children state" in the middle of enemy territory – a 'state' about which almost nobody of their families is aware of, a 'state' which is under constant attack by the Hizbollah . Beaufort became a cult book in Israel… "
Juedische Allgemeine
"A book about waiting, an examination of weariness and a literary study of asymmetrical warfare... BEAUFORT excellently reflects the inner conflicts of its characters… a man whose burning ambition is to fight, tells an anti-war story...".
Sueddeutsche Zeitung
"By turns, it is tragic, funny, mordant, irate, shocking, and poignant… a must read" Booklist
"Evocative, heartbreaking and haunting ... [Israel's] "Red Badge of Courage." Because Leshem, like Stephen Crane, never saw combat, this is not a work of autobiography or observations but one of empathy and reconstruction—and all the stronger for that because the author has deployed both qualities without judgment. Beaufort is that rare thing, a novel of deep moral concern in which sympathetically drawn and beautifully realized characters are allowed to speak for themselves."
Los Angeles Times
“Thirteen young soldiers spring to life with voices at once self-critical and brash, tender and darkly flippant…. Though firsthand accounts and combat memoirs line the shelves of bookstores, Leshem's fiction rivals them in the completeness of his cosmos of war.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“A gripping, viscerally powerful tale.... An alternately grim and blackly comic war/coming-of-age novel.”
Kirkus Reviews
“An important novel…. This is a picture of war from a soldier's point of view. Its language is crude, the body count rises, and yet the tenderness of the bonds among the men is extraordinary.”
Library Journal, starred review
“Stark and searing and stitched with black humor…BEAUFORT makes several statements: courage, yes; camaraderie, sure; but also the futility of war.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Evocative, heartbreaking, and haunting…Leshem’s novel captures the soldiers’ pathos and the claustrophobia of an isolated outpost. As they approach withdrawal and the planned demolition of Beaufort, these emotions build to a shattering climax.”
The Dallas Morning News
“In this gritty first novel….a certain vulnerable charm…pulls the reader through.” New York Times Book Review
“A candid and unsparing portrayal of one young army commander’s service in Lebanon… gripping and essential.”
Montreal Gazette
“A book we couldn’t put down.”
Penthouse
“This is a classic war story, with all the traditional elements of heroism, danger and black humor, but the reader never loses sight of the futility of the war itself.” Bookreporter
“Breathtakingly intense…[BEAUFORT] is rich with layers of combat detail: the relationships, apprehensions, panic, humor, tension, tears, and battle fatigue…Leshem’s journalistic instincts lent the novel a gritty reality that is captivating and compelling – even if you don’t normally read combat fiction. This is a fascinating piece of Israel’s history and the history of war, told in a breathtaking way [with an] excellent, literate, often lyrical translation by Evan Fallenberg.”
San Diego Jewish Journal
“[A] darkly comic yet realistic story…Leshem plunges the reader headfirst into the depths of the Beaufort fortress…Haunting.”
The Jerusalem Post
“At once profane, violent, tragic and hilarious….army life and the labyrinthine Beaufort compound is so richly detailed…”
J, the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California\
“Leshem’s debut offers an antidote, perhaps. Both to the romanticization of battle and to the “shoot-and-cry” syndrome that afflicts Israeli society.”
Zeek Magazine
“[BEAUFORT] is powerfully told…[and] goes deeper into the stories and characters of these young men of the IDF, their lives before and their dreams of after, their loves, their connections to each other, with intimate details about daily life…[Leshem] gets readers with their “nerve endings exposed”…[to] touch them in the deepest way.”
The Jewish Week News
“Gritty…the anxiety and fear are palpable throughout Leshem’s vivid novel- you can practically feel the shells explode.”
Publishers Weekly
