When I Was a Soldier - Softcover

Valerie Zenatti was born in Nice on April Fool's Day 1970. When she was thirteen, she went to live with her parents in Israel, where she did her national service, which inspired her novel, 'When I was a Soldier'. Even now she doesn't go out without her survival kit - these days of a book, a notepad and a pen. She now lives in Paris, where she works also as a translator of Hebrew, and is continually surprised and delighted at seeing Lucas, aged eight, and Nina, nearly two, grow up. This is Valerie Zenatti's first book for Bloomsbury.

Grade 9 Up–In this compelling memoir, Zenatti, first among her group of friends to be called for compulsory military service, chronicles two years of growing up in the Israeli army between 1988 and 1990. With teen self-absorption, she describes the end of her high school years, her initial excitement with the uniform and gun, and grueling training. At first overwrought and pretentious, her voice matures as she continues her course, suffers an anxiety attack, and is posted to a security listening post. As Zenatti grows away from her old friends and a former boyfriend, she becomes more aware and open to the ideas, interests, and needs of others–even, eventually, to the Palestinians who share her country. It is true, as adults told her, "The army changes everything." Although immersed in the country and the experience at the time, Zenatti retains her outsider perspective. French by origin, she and her family emigrated to Beersheva when she was 13, where she learned Hebrew. Her love of language shines through, and the translation, though undeniably British, is smooth. Journal entries in italics are interspersed with the present-tense narrative. This is a fascinating glimpse of a different part of the world and a different kind of experience. Older readers, facing the end of high school themselves, will be drawn to this description of the interim between childhood and adulthood that is a universal Israeli experience.–Kathleen Isaacs, formerly at Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC
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