Michael J. Cooper
“I never sleep well under mortar fire. Last night was no exception. The flares hadn’t helped either, night shining like day.”
So opens my contribution to the Jewish Noir anthology, Good Morning, Jerusalem 1948. Presented in the first-person voice of 26-year-old Yitzhak Rabin, I sought to establish within the first couple of pages a number of features that, for me, are central to Noir fiction. These include the tension between darkness and light, the first-person narrative voice, and the protagonist’s tragic character arc. Additionally, since the anthology is dedicated to the sub-genre of Jewish Noir, the story is set in a historical and thematic context, which reflect aspects of the Jewish experience.