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Exhausted after a 15-hour flight, two young Guatemalans wait at baggage claim at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. They have come to attend their younger sister's wedding to an Orthodox Jewish Brooklynite in Jerusalem. While many look to Israel as the promised land, the narrator of this book, who considers himself "a Jew, sometimes," is surprised to encounter the country with increasing uneasiness. His risky meeting with a sexy Israeli, whom he had met years earlier in Guatemala, forces him to confront his own family history. An autobiographical novel in a tone as simple as it is lyrical, Monasterio is a moving and intense journey to the depths of identity, religious intolerance, limits, and the inventions man uses to understand himself and survive.
