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About the Book

About the Book

Beaufort

By
turns subversive and darkly comic, brutal and tender, Ron Leshem's
debut novel is an international literary sensation, winner of
Israel's top award for literature and the basis for a prizewinning
film. Charged with brilliance and daring, hypnotic in its
intensity, BEAUFORT is at once a searing coming-of-age story and a
novel for our times --- one of the most powerful, visceral
portraits of the horror, camaraderie, and absurdity of war in
modern fiction.

Beaufort. To the handful of Israeli soldiers occupying the ancient
crusader fortress, it is a little slice of hell --- a forbidding,
fear-soaked enclave perched atop two acres of land in southern
Lebanon, surrounded by an enemy they cannot see. And to the
thirteen young men in his command, Twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant
Liraz “Erez” Liberti is a taskmaster, confessor, and
the only hope in the face of attacks that come out of nowhere and
missions seemingly designed to get them all killed.

All around them, tension crackles in the air. Long stretches of
boredom and black humor are punctuated by flashes of terror. And
the threat of death is constant. But in their stony haven, Erez and
his soldiers have created their own little world, their own rules,
their own language. And here Erez listens to his men build castles
out of words, telling stories, telling lies, talking incessantly of
women, sex, and dead comrades. Until, in the final days of the
occupation, Erez and his squad of fed-up, pissed-off, frightened
young soldiers are given one last order: a mission that will
shatter all remaining illusions --- and stand as a testament to the
universal, gut-wrenching futility of war.

BEAUFORT © Copyright 2011 by Ron Leshem. Reprinted with
permission by Delacorte Press. All rights reserved.

Beaufort
by Ron Leshem

  • Publication Date: December 26, 2007
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Hardcover: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Delacorte Press
  • ISBN-10: 0553806823
  • ISBN-13: 9780553806823