The extras are Ezra Brenner and Maryam

"Halim, childhood friends whose paths

cross again on the set of a movie filming in

the Israeli desert. Soon they are falling in

love--and everything is falling apart, for

he is a Jew and she is"a contradiction in

terms; an Isracli Arab.

It is 1976. Since they last met, as hopeful,

awkward teenagers, Ezra has been blood-

icd by two wars and has lost sight of his

vocation, architecture. Maryam has seen her

brother killed and hcr family has moved

to the West Bank in a strained attempt m

rcassimilate. The,love story of thcsc two

cannot hclp but be as dramatic as the land-

scape, as complex as the politics, that sur-

rounds them.

But the already considerable obstacles are

compoundcd by two more--by two forces

directing their actions from behind the

scencs: Ezra s uncle, who has made him an

ambivalcnt informer on the nascent pcacc

movemeut; and Riad, a PLO operative who

is pressuring Maryam to commit herself to

the cause.

In the beaufful, schizophrenic, madden-

ing country that is Israd--a fihn that runs

backward and forward and seems to have no end--Maryam and Ezra struggle to find

their roles. A novel of people awakened

by love, buffeted by family, wounded by

tfistory, The Extras is rich, haunting, and

heartrending.

Wayne Karlin spent four years in the

marines and fought in Viemam. After the

war hc received his bachelor s and master s

degrees and became a reporter for the Gan-

nett newspapers, living in Israel for several

years. He currently teaches college in

Charles County, Maryland, where he lives

with his wife and son. He is the author of

two previous novels, Crossover ("Graceful,

almost poetic" San Diego Union) and Lost

Armies ("Where others overdcscribe and

label, Karlin uses words to cvoke people

and places. Where others use mundane lan-

guage, Karlin peppers his narrative with

poetic word portraits. Where others present

cardboard, one-dimensional characters,

Karlin draws complex, hard-to-classify

ones" Washington Post).