Echoes from the Edge of the World

In summer 2002, the Israeli government began building a complex of concrete walls and electrified fences in the West Bank. It became known in journalistic shorthand as The Wall. Author Peter Lagerqvist has been a resident of the West Bank for the last six years and has watched the Wall since its construction began. Echoes from the Edge of the World is his journey along The Wall, documenting the tragic and surreal life- and landscapes he encounters on the way. Through his travels he searches for the Wall's meaning for those living in its shadow but he also reaches beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and looks at how The Wall is, to borrow from Octavio Paz, a labyrinth of solitude that reflects the hardening geographic and political realities in the world. From gated communities in the United States to asylum detention centers in Britain, to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, Lagerqvist argues, They reflect not only remote insecurities but also commonplace aspirations: Everyone dreams of the good life after all, and everyone wants to be safe. The Wall holds a dark looking glass to such reveries. Written in a elegiac and haunting literary style, looking at landscape as metaphor, Lagerqvist's work is reminiscent of the work of Mike Davis, John Berger, and Rebecca Solnit.