Memory Flaw, Shimon Adaf

Hamelet (The Cement), Assaf Gavron

Motherland, Tehila Hakimi

Continuous Struggle, Michal Sapir

The year is 2066. After a string of ecological disasters, on the one hand, and a technological acceleration that makes a substantial part of human labor redundant and heralds an era of material abundance, on the other hand, the Middle East realigns politically, socially, and economically, as do other regions of the world. The Banks of the Jordan, the area that includes Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and parts of Lebanon and Syria, is a district with an autonomous government, subordinate to the Council of the Middle Eastern Union. Every individual member is entitled to a universal salary and public housing in exchange for hours devoted to the public benefit.

These four postcapitalist novellas are the fruit of an initiative that grew out of a research group at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, led by Dr. Kfir Cohen Lustig. The plot of each of the novellas unfolds in a shared reality conceived and created by the four authors who participated in the group. Each novella is a complete work in itself, but reading the four novellas together broadens the picture of the world and the society described in each novella and reveals a network of connections between issues raised by each one of the four. Each novella is followed by an afterword by Dr. Kfir Cohen Lustig and Prof. Shimon Adaf.