Marianne Loeble 
Hoopoe’s Song 

Oran, a Belgian painter, spends a weekend in London and meets Shani, a woman from the Negev Desert, near Beersheba.Almost a year later, Oran sets off to her agricultural community in Israel. The huge farm is similar to the ancient settlements.There he meets Hagar, Shani’s sister, who has both Jewish and Egyptian roots and yearns for peace.The community is a stone’s throw from the Gaza strip. Times are hard in the first decade of the 21st century. Oran turns out to be a member of an international secret association, and Hagar will try, in vain, to prevent him from going to Gaza to look for his Jewish roots.From cosmopolitan Brussels to the arid Negev Desert and from convivial Haifa to bustling Tel-Aviv, Hoopoe’s Song is the gripping story about the right to happiness for all and a critical analysis of the manipulative tricks used by some international organizations.