The land of promise

Author: Theodore Herzl Publication date: 2025 Book classification: Fiction and Novel Publisher: Al-Rafidain Number of pages: 392 Format: Paperback Summary of the novel: The Land of the Covenant, or Tenuiland in German, is the last work written by the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodore Herzl. It revolves around a lawyer, the Austrian Jew Friedrich Lewinberg, who isolates himself after a failed love story on an island with his Prussian friend, Kingscourt. After two decades of seclusion from the world, he discovers that European Jews established in Palestine what the novel calls the new society inspired by Western civilization. Although the novel is among the foundational literature of the Zionist project, it is strangely considered today one of the forgotten novels in contemporary literature. Deep within this dangerous novel, the reader will uncover the plans drawn by the founders of Zionism for the barren, civilization- and population-free land of Palestine before the Jews' supposed return. Furthermore, the Land of the Covenant, with its utopian dimension, contains answers to many questions that linger in the reader’s mind about what is called Greater Israel and the future of an entire people displaced from their land since the Nakba until today.