And from that moment on, Linda Grant sets her cast of unlikely characters free - as much as possible in a TB clinic in 1950s London. The Dark Circle is her seventh novel. The protagonists are twin teens bursting with life, though they live in the space between collective death of the recent past and the shadow of death in the future, as patients. Yet Grant makes the period and the people come alive - and tells us how.

This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.