The Imaginary Voyage

by Shimon Peres

As Israel moved into its sixth decade as an independent state, former prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres decided to take a sober but loving look at his country. To give that assessment an added dimension, Peres had the ingenious idea - since Israel is a country where past, present, and future coincide and ghosts abound - of taking with him on his "imaginary voyage" Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and the spiritual father of Israel. Despite the decades that separate the two men, and despite their differing visions, they visit together key places throughout the country that Herzl had known only as "dreams in the desert.". Often seeing eye to eye but sometimes irritated with each other, the two visionaries compare and comment in a dialogue that gives us a fascinating, insightful look at a country as old as history and as current as today's headlines. Whatever their differences, both men are united in their pride in and love of the Promised Land to which they de