Beaufort

Beaufort a remote and beautiful fort in southern Lebanon
dating back to the Crusades has been an outpost of the
Israeli Defence Force for nearly twenty years and now for
the teenage soldiers who live there presiding over the
last moments of Israels presence in Lebanon it has become
a world of its own an enclave in the heart of enemy
territory where boy soldiers create a state with its own
rules and its own unique outrageous brutal language. With
a critical eye and an empathetic heart Ron Leshem dishes
up a wholly human story that takes place in conditions
that are anything but. Fast-paced and brutally honest
unflinching and uproariously funny Beaufort has been
hailed – not only by critics but by the generation of
soldiers who served in Lebanon during Israeli occupation –
as the true voice of that sobering period. Written as the
diary of Liraz (Erez) Liberti the head of a commando team
stationed at Beaufort during the last winter of Israeli
occupation Beaufort is a revolutionary and potent look at
the futility of war and death and the courage it takes to
put an end to it.This is not a story of war but of
retreat. This is a story with no enemy only an amorphous
entity that fires missiles from the surrounding mountains.
And while thirteen young men propel the novel and give it
life and colour the real hero of Beaufort is fear:
contagious intoxicating palpable fear a word they forbid
themselves from uttering. Beaufort is a devastating
portrayal of a generation finding that the values and
principles bestowed on them by their parents have betrayed
them and the terrifying nihilistic reality of Middle
Eastern conflict.