Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv

A Novel

The literary sensation that has stirred the French publishing world from award-winning author Marco Koskas.

Juliette has come to Tel Aviv to be with the love of her life. But when she shows up at Elias’s apartment, he’s with another woman. With nowhere else to go, Juliette falls in with a tight-knit group of French expats living in this city by the sea.

There’s Manu, the retired adult film star turned real estate agent; Diabolo, a former mobster and aspiring media mogul; and Olga, a head-turning beauty who becomes fast friends with Juliette. When Elias, a film school dropout, initiates a scheme intended to make him some fast cash so he can impress Olga with flashy jewelry, he unwittingly gets Juliette and Olga thrown in jail.

As all the friends try their misguided best to help one another, they all must ask themselves: Can people take responsibility for something they didn’t do in order to be absolved for all the things they have done?

©2018 Marco Koskas (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Translation © 2020 by David Ball

Painful!

As I listened to this book, I often felt lost. The characters seemed naive, juvenile, unnecessary, simple minded, useless. They were not believable in their actions and thoughts. Perhaps something was lost in translation? Afterword, I was left wondering why this story was told.