http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/391586/ambivalence#9780143054757
"This book will change how you think about Israel and Palestine. Garfinkel's empathy is broad and real, and his characters - ordinary people in complex situations - suggest that, in the end, there is real hope for a resolution."
- Brian Eno
"Marvelous. Jonathan Garfinkel deftly mines what it means to simultaneously belong, disavow, love, and loathe an identity, a culture, and a history. And does so with artful language and deep feeling.... A must-read."
- David Rakoff
"It is precisely [Garfinkel's] inner struggle, documented quite beautifully in this powerful cri de coeur, that makes this book a deeply engaging account of a Jewish 'coming of age'... It is sadness, not anger, that this story provokes, plus an abiding hope that both Jews and Arabs may yet overcome pathological forms of nationalism."
- Michael Lerner, Globe and Mail
"This is a book both painful and beautiful to read: by evoking the sharpness of his internal struggle with his sense of identity and his attitude towards Israel, Garfinkel makes his search for some kind of reconciliation serve as an apt microcosmic lens through which to view the Middle East’s most complicated conflict."
- New Statesman
"[Ambivalence] is often raw and unfiltered, scandalous and vulgar. And that’s part of what makes it rich and interesting and worth reading... Garfinkel sees the country with a poet’s eye and weaves Israel’s many characters together with figures from his own past... Often his narration is dreamlike, evoking memories of that past even as present-day Israel unfolds before him."
- Christian Science Monitor
http://www.playwrightscanada.com/index.php/house-of-many-tongues.html
Nominated for the 2011 Governor General's Award in Drama.
WAZ (Germany): "Beautifully fearless ... A lovely piece ... Garfinkel dares to approach a serious theme with a humour that writers of an older generation would not dare .. He has what used to be called chutzpah, and now is simply 'cool', or, timelessly, 'streetsmart'. A big applause!"
Ruhrnachrichten (Germany): 'Wonderful ...funny and yet deeply sincere... There is a piece of utopia in this little crazy tale."
NOW (Toronto): "Playwright Jonathan Garfinkel attacks the Israeli-Palestinian question through laughs and magic realism."
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"There's nothing finer, for those with strong nerves, than cabaret that's the real thing…. The unfakable ingredient is that the artists must be so angry that they struggle to remain coherent…. Everything becomes furiously beautiful and cruelly funny…. Garfinkel has prepared an acidic script… hideously magnetic." —**** The Globe and Mail
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0080z8j