Review “The world is a rumor”September 9, 2021

A dazzling portrait of wild youth and love one the one hand and of fatherhood and love on the other. Baram ability to crack open the nature of human existence’ the fascinating plot, the combination of Israeli reality and a world of mystery with a fantastic touch – are just part of the the book’s power. it is a contemporary and original masterpiece.

(writer and reviewer Anat Einhar, “Hebrew”, Critic choice)

“A wonderful and again wonderful novel. a book you can not stop reading, and will make every reader emotonal and with  desire to look at its life”

(Yoav Ginai, National Radio)

A moving, surprising. exiting novel that miraculously balance reality and imagination, a must Read!”

(Noam Partom, Ynet)

“Fatherhood, friendship, love and betrayal, politics, Corona, imagination and reality are all mixed up in this wonderful and exciting novel, just read it”

(Keren Agmon, “only Books”)

Review by the veteran critic Ran Ben-Nun. Yediot Aharonot. (29.8.2021)

“Yonathan, a writer in his early 40s, takes his son Itamar on a journey. They climb a mountain, where on the top of it: there is a man that can save him. Maybe.

Yonathan can not get rid of the memories that hunts him, he envisions all the time his best friend that committed suicide 4 years ago.

That’s how “The World is a Rumor” begins.

Yonathan askes the man from the mountain, who poses a dangerous talent, to muffle his memories, so they can be less lucid and painful. It’s not obvious that this is what he needs. But certainly, he needs a change: Yonathan is restless, angry, bursts on strangers with no reason, and it seems that the only thing he cares about is his son Itamar.

Baram goes back 20 years to the past, when after the army service – Yonathan and Yoel went to London together. Yoel at that time was in an eternal on and off relationship with Tali: their best friend from childhood and the painful part in a difficult, complicated impossible triangle between Yoel Yonathan and her. A triangle of love and betrayal that maybe led Yoel to this early death.

Baram is a magician of complicated and challenging relationships between human beings. It’s not clear why people are together or separate, but suddenly it happens – a light comes and with the light wonderful observations about people and their inner world that only Baram can describe in such a wonderful way. Clearly Baram is one of the top writers in Israel today.

In the Yonathan character, you can see the young Baram character who is sure that his first book was published only because of his father, a famous politician.

But The most important character that comes from Baram new novel is Yonathan the father, totally devoted to his son. In Barams novel fatherhood is total, existential, even spiritual, every fiber in Yonathan being is connected to this son. And when your marriage is torn apart, friendships collapse, and the world loses its meaning, all that you have is simply being a father.”