The Settlers

Name: The Settlers
ISBN: 9781625670854

Meyer Levin

From the acclaimed author of Compulsion comes the saga of a Jewish family that flees Russia to become settlers of the nascent state of Israel.

Proclaimed "most significant American Jewish writer of his time" by Los Angeles Times, Meyer Levin turns his journalistic eye for character and detail to an epic tale of the founding of Israel. At the turn of the twentieth century, Feigel and Yankel Chaimovitch are among the many Russian Jews caught up in the burgeoning revolution. To escape the pogroms, they flee with their children to their ancient homeland, Eretz Yisroel.

Though Eretz Yisroel is a place of unparalleled beauty, these pioneers face innumerable hardships: poverty, disease, grueling physical labor, and violent tensions with their Arab neighbors. There are even conflicts within their own ranks, especially between new arrivals and established settlers. And as World War I escalates, each family member—from second-oldest son Gidon, who struggles through the disastrous Gallipoi campaign, to Leah, who awaits the return of her fickle Moshe—struggles to build their future.

About the Author

Meyer Levin (1905-1981) was an American novelist, journalist, and filmmaker, and one of the most prolific Jewish American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Chicago to immigrant parents, he studied at the University of Chicago and began his career as a newspaper reporter. His early novels, including Reporter (1929) and Yehuda (1931), drew on both city journalism and his growing engagement with Jewish and Zionist themes.

His breakthrough came with The Old Bunch (1937), a sweeping, realistic portrait of a group of second-generation Jewish Americans coming of age in Chicago. He later reported from Europe and Palestine and documented the aftermath of the Holocaust, including a stint as a war correspondent and work on documentary films.

His best-known work, Compulsion (1956), a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case, became a bestseller and was adapted for stage and film. Levin was also a passionate early advocate for The Diary of Anne Frank in the United States. His dispute over the dramatization of the diary, and the legal battle with Otto Frank that followed, consumed much of his later life and became the subject of his memoir The Obsession (1973).

Levin settled largely in Israel from the 1950s onward, and later novels such as The Settlers (1972) and The Harvest (1978) drew on that experience. His novel The Stronghold (1965) earned the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction in 1966. Levin died in Jerusalem in 1981.