Falafel King Is Dead

Members of an Israeli family cope with new threats and old losses in a novel “remarkable for the vividness of the five individual voices” (The Times).

The town has lost its famed falafel king, but the Dadon family have also lost a father and husband. Living with the daily threat of Katyusha missiles from neighboring Lebanon, and struggling to survive amid the rubble of their lives, Simona and her three children each find their own way of coping with their grief, their fear, and their hopes.

Raw, lyrical, shocking and moving, Sara Shilo's powerful debut novel recounts the life of an ordinary Israeli family over the course of a single, extraordinary day.

“This is a beautifully drawn account of a family collapsing under an unbearable loss ... Pivoted on a death, this novel becomes a life-affirming story of love—a cluttered, clumsy family love that colors the characters and wills them into keeping on and moving forward. And it is this driving emotion that ultimately makes Shilo’s first novel so readable and so engaging.”—The Guardian