A wonderfully poignant novel by one of my new favourite authors (A Stranger City will rank in my top-ten reads of the year, as this may do). When I Lived could be seen — at its simplest — as a coming of age novel. However, there is much more to it than that. It is a work of contrasts, between Soho and Tel Aviv; the past and present; personal and political priorities and naive optimism versus brutal reality. Being young and Jewish at the end of the War with the opportunity to play a (notional) role in the building of the new state of Israel must have been a fascinating if not somewhat daunting moment in which to have lived. The flexing of history in this always febrile region is captured superbly by Grant. Much of it (e.g. the British Mandate in Palestine and the antipathy felt by many 'new' Jews towards the colonialist Empire) was new to me. When I Lived is fictionalised journalism at its best; an informative account for anyone interested in the region. The poignancy of the work was rendered all the more so for by reading this when in/travelling back from Tel Aviv. It's an amazing city today — I have walked along many of the streets referenced by Grant — and must have been even more so in 1946. 9.5/10.
By Linda Grant