If time is ending, then what is time? And how does our experience of time—fraying now, stopping and starting, racing, halting, dragging itself along—reflect the very histories that have brought us to this perilous point, the pasts we have erased and paved over, this anxious present, the future we have no choice but to build?
Layering climate science, mythology, nature writing, philosophy, literature, and personal experience, National Magazine Award winner Ben Ehrenreich “has built a potent memorial to our own ongoing end-times” (The New York Times Book Review). Desert Notebooks examines how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape have led us to the brink of a calamity greater than any humankind has confronted before. Ehrenreich draws on the stark grandeur of the desert to ask how we might reckon with the uncertainty that surrounds us and fight off the crises that have already begun.
In the canyons and oases of the Mojave and in Las Vegas’s neon apocalypse, Ehrenreich finds beauty, and even hope, surging up in the most unlikely places, from the most barren rocks, and the apparent emptiness of the sky. Desert Notebooks is a vital and necessary chronicle of our past and our present–unflinching, urgent– yet timeless and profound.
Praise for Desert Notebooks:
"Startlingly original . . . Out of love and despair (where else does art come from?), he has built a potent memorial to our own ongoing end-times." —William Atkins, The New York Times Book Review
"This haunting meditation on terminal capitalism and its unthinkable future clearly establishes its author as one of our greatest essayists, wholly contemporary with these strange times." —Mike Davis
"Exciting and illuminating . . . Very few writers have addressed the current planetary crisis as powerfully and insightfully as Ehrenreich does. The book is extraordinary as much for the rigor of its thinking as for the manner of its writing." —Amitav Ghosh
"Confessional, contemplative, intellectually adventurous, Ben Ehrenreich's Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time is a worthy addition to the library of American aridity . . . Ehrenreich's intellectual explorations are challenging but never pretentious . . . [He] shows that deserts can make us wise in new ways." --Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle
"A tapestry of aphorisms and personal essays, colonial history and ancient legends . . . Desert Notebooks is a searing indictment of the ascendance of white supremacy over more than 200 years and how the orthodoxy of capitalism has set us on a collision course with climate change." —Jonathan Hahn, Sierra
"Essential reading about the place and the rest of the world as it relates to it . . . The mix of science, myth, anecdotes, and a profound love for the terrain produces one of my favorite reads of the spring thus far, if not the year." —Chris La Tray, Buzzfeed
"In his timely new book, Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time, a hybrid memoir, travelogue and metaphysical inquiry, Ben Ehrenreich explores how our perception of time changes in a crisis--a crisis like climate change, or COVID-19 . . . [He] fuses the personal with the political in reflections on climate change, the president's disaster du jour and his extensive reading in the desert." —Jim Ruland, Los Angeles Times
"An urgent plea to revise our relationship to the planet, each other, and time . . . Lyrical, freshly observed . . . Well-informed and -rendered, passionate reflections on humanity's prospects." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"These are the kind of conversations we need to be having--with ourselves and with others. And the desert seems like the right austere setting to be having them. These fine essays take a deep tradition in American writing and extend it into our uncertain and collapsing present." —Bill McKibben, author of Falter and The End of Nature
"Combs through history, literature, myth, physics, and ecology to understand how we got here, and how we might find our way out, into forms of time that are made not of our thralldom to capital and petroleum but of our relationships to each other, to our fellow creatures, to plants and rocks and landscapes, and to the stars and sun and moon overhead . . . The thrill of Desert Notebooks is that in its lucid pages such a miracle seems almost possible." —Anthony McCann, author of Shadowlands
"A book for our time—that is, a time scorched by harsh solar rays, shimmering in searing, phosphorescent prose." —Sesshu Foster, author of Atomik Aztex and ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines
You can buy a copy here or here, and at your local independent bookshop. Also available as an audio book.
Selected as one of the best books of the year by The Guardian, The Economist, and the San Francisco Chronicle, The Way to the Spring describes the cruel mechanics of the Israeli occupation and the endless absurdities and tragedies it engenders: the complex and humiliating machinery of the checkpoints, walls, courts, and prisons; the steady, strangling loss of land; the constant ebb and flow of deadly violence. Blending political and historical context with the personal stories of the people he meets, Ehrenreich records the extremes to which Palestinians are pushed, the daily deprivation and oppression that they face, and the strategies they construct to resist and survive—stoicism, resignation, rebellion, humor, and a stubborn, defiant joy.
Praise for The Way to the Spring:
"Profoundly powerful not only in [its] observations and stories, but in how courageously and carefully [it] speak to our present moment." —Madeleine Thien, The Millions
"A chillingly beautiful, albeit heartbreaking, chronicle of Palestinian life in the West Bank. It's written with immense empathy, but is equally grounded, and urgently real." — Yasmine El Rashidi, The Guardian
"A heartbreaking account of the brutal and often surreal realities of life under Israel occupation. After reading it, you don't know whether to despair at the callousness and self-righteousness of human beings, or to wonder at their resilience and creativity." — Yuval Noah Harari, The Guardian
"Captures events unfolding on the West Bank with sympathy and restraint," Colm Tóibín, Irish Times
"I'm gripped by it. Ehrenreich lived with many of those he writes about, and so his story is wonderfully intimate. A mother reading Dan Brown in Arabic. A settler tangled in razor wire. The black socks on a dead man’s feet. For all its politics – and its author is extremely attentive to the way things work (and don’t work) in Palestine – I feel more like I’m involved in a pacy novel than struggling to swallow yet more unpalatable truths." —Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
“The Way to the Spring is a riveting and powerful work….Readers near and far who seek greater understanding of how Palestinians live — and the violence they endure — are well served by Ehrenreich’s book.” — Samuel Thrope, Haaretz
“Ehrenreich’s haunting, poignant and memorable stories add up to a weighty contribution to the Palestinian side of the scales of history.” — Ben Rawlence, New York Times Book Review
"An intensely human, intimate book about the resilience of ordinary Palestinians who cannot count even on the corrupt, crony-infested "regent regime" that is the Palestinian authority to help them fight Israeli repression... His reportage is rendered all the more powerful by its understated language." — Martin Fletcher, Sunday Telegraph
"Ehrenreich reveals a Palestine that is defined not by loss, but by 'semi-magical' defiance and vitality. Despite their land 'vanishing beneath their feet', life continues and, as one young resident puts it, remains 'beautiful.'" —Claire Hazelton, Financial Times
“An impassioned and humane story.” — O Magazine
“An elegant and moving account . . . [Ehrenreich] brings a novelist’s eye to his subject . . . It should be read by friends and foes of Israel alike.” — The Economist
“Ben Ehrenreich’s extraordinary new book, The Way to the Spring, chronicles individual Palestinians who live with this existential struggle and, in his words, ‘decline to consent to one’s own eradication, to fight actively or through deceptively simple acts of refusal against powers far stronger than oneself.’ The timing of this particular kind of work could not be better.” — Joshua Alvarez, The Brooklyn Rail
“A devastating portrait of unending turbulence in Palestine.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Teeming with heartbreak, irony, and intimate moments of joy . . . [Ehrenreich] paints a vivid portrait of life in three locations: the village of Nabi Saleh, where families have been protesting weekly for the right to use a spring that was theirs until Israeli settlers claimed it, and are consistently met with force; the city of Hebron, a puzzle box of checkpoints and segregated zones, and a powder keg of Jewish and Palestinian resentments; and the village of Umm al-Kheir, where a way of life is quietly dying in the shadow of ever-expanding settlements. With a journalist’s keen eye for detail and a novelist’s ardor for language and its ability to move people, Ehrenreich will incite renewed compassion in his readers.” — Publishers Weekly
"It is all too easy to become overwhelmed by the glaring injustice and the difficulties a traveler encounters in the territories occupied by Israel but Ben Ehrenreich resists the temptation. He remains enraged but lucid, eloquent and insightful. Of the voluminous amount of writing about the occupation this is one to treasure. He retains an intimacy with his subject without losing his critical distance. So much has been written about the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel but rarely with such vividness, eloquence and success in illuminating complex historical and political realities. This is a superbly intelligent, informative and critical book about one of the fundamental issues of our time." — Raja Shehadeh
“The myriad ordeals suffered by the Palestinian people during the last eighty years are minutely reported here. It’s a chronicle of their daily lives. Read it! It recognises and respects hope.” — John Berger
“Ben Ehrenreich’s rendition of the Palestinian experience is powerful, deep and heartbreaking, so much closer to the ground than the Middle East reporting we usually see. I wish there were more writers as brave.” — Adam Hochschild
“Ben Ehrenreich, a gifted novelist and journalist, went to Palestine not to instruct or lecture, as all too many writers have done, but to listen. The result is a powerful, at times almost feverish account of a people defying oppression, with creativity, resourcefulness, and a distinctively grim sense of humor. Palestinian lives matter to Ehrenreich, and he writes about them from the bottom-up, with hard-boiled lyricism, novelistic intimacy and a revolutionary's sense of urgency. As heart-breaking as it is, The Way to the Spring is also a strangely joyful book, because Ehrenreich grasps the essence of the Palestinian struggle: not Islam, or even nationalism, but the stubborn refusal of injustice, the restless search for ‘how it would feel to be free,’ as Nina Simone said. The Way to the Spring is more than a work of journalism. It is a freedom song, burning with humanity.” — Adam Shatz
“Sets a new standard for mainstream reporting on Palestine: informed, enlightening, open-hearted. Ehrenreich illuminates the daily human experience of Occupation through the nuances of resistance and solidarity.” — Sarah Schulman
“Though often framed as a ‘foreign policy problem,’ Palestine is a land of miracles and wonders, with ordinary men and women who ‘decline to consent to [their] own eradication’ struggling against a vast landscape to live free lives one day at a time. The land and its people exert an uncanny attraction; everyday struggles achieve an uncanny beauty. In The Way to the Spring, Ben Ehrenreich shapes the uncanny into words and into stories. This is a compelling, essential book.” — Mark Danner
“In The Way to The Spring, Ben Ehrenreich accomplishes an extraordinary feat of journalism. His portraits of Palestinian resistance are luminous; his writing subtle, meticulously documented and deeply human; showing the nuanced empathy that slashes through the best funded government propaganda. This is a necessary book.” — Molly Crabapple
“I loved The Way To The Spring. Ehrenreich is excellent on the nuances of suffering and survival.The book is to be read with acceptance, subtlety, and an open mind – just as it was written.” — Bidisha
"Written with fire in the belly and a hawk’s eye for the telling fact. The Way to the Spring is an unforgettable read but not an easy one, full of uncomfortable and inconvenient truths. Ehrenreich’s great talent is for testimony; the individual human stories that disrupt gross injustice by asking questions about morality, legality and the actual historical record. Ehrenreich’s non-fiction debut is a powerful and unwavering pursuit of the through-lines of freedom.” — Rachel Holmes
You can buy a copy here or here, or at your local independent bookshop. Also available as an audiobook.
A bearded man in a badly soiled suit known only as the Stranger wanders an apocalyptic landscape on the fringes of a dying metropolis, looking for a way to "get back on top." Thwarted and rejected at every turn by old friends and strangers alike--even by the author of this novel, whom he visits repeatedly in unsuccessful attempts to determine his own narrative--his impotence and rage are expressed in acts of seemingly senseless violence. The various characters he encounters on his journey--a pack of sadistic boys, skinheads who beat him senseless, a deaf-mute woman who tries to heal him, a sidewalk preacher and a deranged man who identify him as The One--avoid him or abuse him, or attempt to follow him.
Entertaining, disturbing and wildly intelligent, written with sinister humor and great compassion, Ether reflects on the possibilities and consequences of forgiveness, the problems of faith and the trials of creation.
Praise for Ether:
"A stranger walks into town. Lyrical and blindingly clear, Ben Ehrenreich's Ether unfolds in dreamy simultaneous timescapes punctuated by flashes of violence. Moving between busses and bars, rail yards and suburbs, Ehrenreich's novel depicts the teeming activity that persists in the world beneath an ether of numbness. Like a David Lynch movie transcribed by Pierre Reverdy, it's a brilliant and unforgettable book, written somewhere between sleeping and waking." —Chris Kraus author of Torpor and Where Art Belongs
"Ben Ehrenreich's Ether is anything but. The descriptions pop. The world is rendered without qualification, without fear. The structure is challenging, refreshing, effective. This is an intense, intelligent novel novel that paints a vivid picture of an America that most of us refuse to see, are afraid to see. This is real art." —Percival Everett, author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier
"A book that's both pure as snow and filthy as dirt, with the lovely detachment of ice. Like Beckett, Ehrenreich has the talent of being particular and general at once, and thus steps outside time." —Lydia Millet, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Love in Infant Monkeys
"Ether is a dark and powerful work, with disturbing metaphysical overtones. Ben Ehrenreich is a gathering power in the literary land." —John Banville, author of The Infinities and The Sea
"Ben Ehenreich transforms the brutal human and urban blight into a landscape of cosmic battle. Ether is a dark, complex, richly written, beautiful novel. It is a rarity in American fiction today." —Frederic Tuten, author of Self Portraits: Fictions and Tintin in the New World
"Ether, perhaps even more than his previous novel, The Suitors, shows Ben Ehrenreich unafraid of storytelling that is terrifically bold and sly. Ehrenreich seems to have returned from hiking the ruined wastelands and margins of Port-au-Prince and New Orleans, Mexico City and Los Angeles, Arizona and Phnom Penh, having cracked open the hard nut of the world. Or perhaps Ehrenreich himself has cracked, allowing him to tell this wild, eerie tale of forgiveness for blasted, shattered times. Cries of seabirds from the Gulf of Mexico and pale forms of dying dolphins and porpoises glimmer darkly through it. But in Ether, the heart opens and shines a light, magnetic and acrid, smudged and infrared." —Sesshu Foster, author of World Ball Notebook and Atomik Aztex
An audacious reimagining of The Odyssey, in which Penny waits alone at home while Payne, a modern-day Odysseus, gallivants around the world on battleships and attack helicopters, waging wars of conquest. A drinking, drugging crew of ne'er-do-well squatters surrounds Penny, eager for her attention. Even their most eyebrow-raising exploits can't distract her, though, as she angrily pines for Payne. But when a mysterious man with suspicious origins arrives on the scene, the suitors' precarious pecking order falls to pieces in the glow of Penny's newly ignited ardor. Brutal, playful, sexy, and subversive, The Suitors is a classic of its own kind.
Praise for The Suitors:
"Brilliant, and at the same time moving. It's a relief to know that literature exists yet." —Juan Goytisolo
"Incantatory. ... I admire this book, its authority … There is not a line of waste in the telling, not a tired verb, not a cliché of sentimentality in this novel tense with romance, not a sorry gap in the story as it drives at a pace at once leisurely and speeding, not one gimmick in its originality. This is truly a ravishing book." —Frederic Tuten, BOMB
"It’s a fantastic hodgepodge … smart and postmodern in a puckish, Calvino-like sense. … Ehrenreich writes with an ease and pure line-by-line skill that’s rare." —New York Times Book Review
"The Suitors is not your ordinary first novel. … Ehrenreich blends Tom Robbins’ sly humor with Steve Erickson's bubbling sense of the subconscious and Voltaire’s irreverent twists of plot. In addition, there is that beautiful certainty of the young writer’s voice." —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A richly imagined novel loosely based on Homer’s and inspired by a dazzling display of verbal gifts. …Ehrenreich’s prodigious, Joycean prose establishes him as a writer to watch." —Booklist
"With his linguistic acrobatics, caustic wit and mix-and-match structure, Ehrenreich shows the stirrings of an original talent… for those with a lust for American modernist fiction, Ehrenreich’s will be a journey they’ll gladly take." —Publisher's Weekly
“Ehrenreich can evoke a heartbreaking anomie… The Suitors has moments of startling compassion.” —Village Voice
“The Suitors is smart and funny, taking swipes at the Bush administration, the Iraq war, and the notion of heroism, in this or any other age.” —Los Angeles magazine
“At once anarchic and stirring, Ben Ehrenreich's The Suitors has the well-earned confidence of its own crazy music, and of an original vision that sees no contradiction between subversion and compassion.” —Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville and Our Ecstatic Days
“Gorgeous and brutal, sexy and sly and sad, The Suitors is many stories in one: a stay-at-homer’s Odyssey in which the monsters wear our faces and the most perilous journey is the one between two people.” —Shelley Jackson, author of Half Life and The Melancholy of Anatomy
“The Suitors is an immensely clever novel, dense, demandingly allusive and powerful – but it is not in the least intimidating. Ben Ehrenreich is too compelling a narrator and too playful and subversive a writer to provide anything for his reader other than unbroken pleasure.” —Jim Crace, author of The Pesthouse and Genesis
“Ben Ehrenreich has created a beautifully structured and inventive novel. The language of The Suitors is richly layered, full of nuance and subtle gesture. This is a novel that merely pretends to be quiet. It is a work will pull me back to it again and again.” —Percival Everett, author of Wounded and Erasure
You can buy it here.