Episode
Book Lecture: The Israeli
- Published
- Feb 6, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2570
- Processing state
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- https://soundcloud.com/theiwp/book-lecture-the-israeli
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Summary
About the Lecture: The Israeli, a novel by veteran journalist Phil Kurata, is set in the years 1947 to 1965, after the end of World War II, when in the Middle East, newly independent countries were shaking off the colonial powers of Britain and France. It reimagines the life of famed spy Eli Cohen. Beginning in Alexandria, Egypt, it transitions to a nascent Israel and then to Syria, where Cohen spies for the Israelis. Steeped in the food and the culture of the Middle East at that formative period, it takes a hard-eyed view of racism and prejudice on both the Israeli and Arab sides. It takes the reader on a deep dive into the intractable and often vicious conflicts that split the region today. About the Speaker: Phillip Kurata is a novelist and former journalist who grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and earned a bachelor’s degree in French literature and a master’s degree in Asian Studies from the University of Kansas. He studied at the University of Tunis in the mid-1960s, and—as a fluent French speaker—he returned to Tunisia as a Peace Corps Volunteer and a public health educator. He got into journalism while studying Chinese in Taiwan, writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He later worked for United Press International, Agence France Presse and Voice of America in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, France, and Washington, DC. Phil served for many years as a writer with the U.S. Department of State, based in Washington, DC. His first novel, The Reluctant Agent, was published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House as the Fiction Prize winner. His most recent novel, The Israeli, published in 2024, is a fictionalized story of the legendary Israeli spy, Eli Cohen, and examines the destructive power of ethnic hatred. Dr. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie is a forensic psychiatris…