"When I read 'White Faces', on a plane on the way back to Tel Aviv, an urge gripped me, an obsession I had to respond to, to translate the novel into Hebrew. This is a mesmerizing novel about the cruel world of the Lebanese Civil War. Through deceptive language and seductive literary techniques, Khoury exposes the violence and evil that has spread across the country. Already during the flight from London I found myself starting to translate in pencil on the margins of the book, and when I returned to Tel Aviv I postponed all my other commitments and dived into hard work, many hours every day, until I felt my mind was wrong about me. I immersed myself in the story as if in a dream and woke up from it about a month later with the first draft of the novel. It was only later that I learned that Khoury had written the novel in one go for three intense weeks."

Lilah Nethanel (Series Editor) chats with Yuval Avivi and Maya Sela on Kan Tarbut (from 15 minutes in the podcast, in Hebrew)