At 92NY, Elliot Ackerman speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright about The Human Scale, a geopolitical murder mystery set in Israel and Palestine.
Measuring the Value of Human Life
Wright explains that the title refers to the unequal value societies place on different lives. Through a murder investigation in Hebron, the novel examines how Israelis and Palestinians have been shaped by grief, displacement, fear, and generations of conflict.
Understanding Without Agreeing
Ackerman and Wright discuss fiction’s ability to enter the minds of people whose beliefs readers may reject. Rather than reducing characters to political positions, The Human Scale asks readers to understand the histories, loyalties, and wounds that shape them.
Hatred, Religion, and Otherness
The conversation explores how minor differences can sustain intense hatred, how religious belief influences behavior, and why the Israel-Palestine conflict has spread beyond the region into American politics, campuses, and public life.
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Read Lawrence Wright’s The Human Scale, a literary thriller that uses a murder investigation in Hebron to explore justice, identity, grief, and the human consequences of the Israel-Palestine conflict.