“An intense, funny and violent novel… a wonderful book… Gavron’s Magnum

Opus, written with the pretension and dare of The Great Israeli Novel.”

Yehuda Nuriel, Yediot Achronot.

“One of the most important Israeli novels of recent years.”

Arik Glasner, Yedioth Achronot

“The Hilltop is first and foremost a very funny novel. And it is a very political

novel, firing sharp poisoned barbs in all directions… But what really makes “The

Hilltop” ascend to the top of the literary heap is the sharp movement between two

antithetical poles of the storytelling craft. On one end you have the meticulously

orchestrated analytic and ironic voice, which sends the reader to regions of

reflection on the essence of Israeliness… on the other pole you will find the

keenest emotion, enough to rip the heart in two… this particular reader, a leftist-

radical-agnostic girl, did not expect to fall in love, contrary to her own good

sense, with a protagonist who is despicable by any standard.”

Liat Elkayam, Haaretz Books Supplement

“The most interesting book written about the religious Zionism… a marvelous

novel!”

Keren Neubach, Seder Yom (National Israeli Radio)

“The best novel you will read in the near future.”

Amit Segal, political correspondent, Channel 2 News

“Gavron loves his characters. The settlers in The Hilltop are not ideological

scarecrows, even when ideology has an important role in their lives. The Hilltop

is not an anthropological book about the settlers. It is a story about a hill on

which people live. A small hill in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of

everywhere. It is a universal story, and also a very private story.”

Motti Fogel, Achbar Ha’ir Magazine

“A groundbreaking attempt to move the focus to the settlement as the setting of

the Israeli Story.”

Yoni Livne, Yediot Achronot

“I’m always happy to read a new book by Assaf Gavron. from this generation he is

really one of those who have the language and the ability to sweep you into a

story with the speed of a crocodile collecting his prey down into the water. He

simply plucks you into it and you are there. He achieves an almost impossible

deed and manages to write about the settlers reality objectively, meaning, he is

telling a story first. Wonderful.”

Jacky Levi, GLZ Radio

“A dazzling novel… A clinically accurate and stunningly powerful description of

the state of affairs in the twenty first century Israel. The Hilltop manages to

connect emotionally to the situation and at the dame time to laugh at it from the

outside.”

Ran Bin-Nun, Yediot Achronot

“The Hilltop avoids didacticism and turns reality into a game between images, a

game whose rules are so complex and vague that it is-and will remain-impossible

to identify who the victor is.”

Omri Herzog, Haaretz

“The Hilltop is a novel about human weaknesses, about the exhausting places

that drive all of us and about the moment of clarity that sometimes awaken us,

but paralize us in other moments. Assaf Gavron did not write a novel about the

fact that we are all human beings, he simply wrote a novel about human beings.”

Anat Gafni, Mako

“A clever novel, with which Gavron demonstrates a variety of writing styles, from

scathing social realism to laugh-out-loud satire (the dogs in the outpost are

named Beilin and Condoleezza) without patronizing his protagonists even for a

moment (the cover mentions that he wrote part of the novel in a hut in an

outpost). Great literature isn’t meant to help us decide how to vote in the ballot.

It is enough that it will present for us anew the familiar and the mundane. The

Hilltop is surely great literature.”

Ronen Tal, Sofashavua Magazine

“Assaf Gavron’s The Hilltop succeeds in combining light and sharp writing with

an original and uncompromising statement about the settlement project… The

new Great Israeli Novel.”

Yuval Avivi, Time Out Tel Aviv

“This rainbow of characters is described in Gavron’s virtuoso language, which is

at sometimes quick and at others lingers. Gavron can examine a moment with a

surgeon’s knife, and moment later describes international events and compresses

different events to a sweeping, funny plot… An absurd comedy that is realist and

funny at the same time.”

Yonatan Amir, Israel Hayom

“The whole of The Hilltop is written by Gavron simply brilliantly, and he manages

to refine a human and touching truth from every character, and does so with

beautiful literary aesthetics that pleases with its accurate wording… allow me to

bet that next year we will see gavron shortlisted for the Sapir Award, and rightly

so.”

Edna Abramson, The Literary Republic Blog