Above all, never forget: the most important thing about a promised land is not the land, but the promise.

Teenage Michel of the Club of Incorrigible Optimists is a college boy. A romantic, eager to tackle everything the world can throw at him, he ventures to Israel to spirit his beloved out of a kibbutz. His friend Igor, a Russian-Jewish dissident and doctor exiled in Paris, also goes to Israel, and then on to Leningrad as a spy for the Mossad, in the sole hope of finding his family. And Michel’s older brother, Franck a communist heart and soul, settles in Algiers after the Declaration of Independence, becoming the right-hand man to one of Boumediene’s close comrades. The whirlwind of passion, romance, politics, and the promises of consumer society will sweep readers up in this delightful novel.