Time Tourists is my debut novel, published by Yedioth Books in 2022.
I began writing it in 2018, after my father died unexpectedly.
During the shiva, an older man, about my father’s age, arrived and told us that my father had been his thermodynamics teacher.
This was something entirely new to me. I had no idea my father had taught physics at a university.
I later discovered that he had also kept his notebooks from his student days, and of course I went looking for them.
Thermodynamics was one of my favourite subjects during the pre-medical programme I attended at the time, and I read my father’s notebooks avidly. Something about the mathematical equations and explanations of physics fascinated me and made me feel close to my father again.
After finishing the notebooks, I continued reading online, in physics books, and eventually in academic papers. In time, I also came to Albert Einstein’s theories.
Physics made me feel closer to my father and began to spark the first seeds of the idea for Time Tourists.
While reading, I came across a letter of condolence Einstein had written to the family of his close friend, Michele Besso. In it, he wrote that for physicists, death has no meaning, since the past, present, and future are merely an illusion. That thought gave me great comfort while I was grieving for my father.
In the same letter, Einstein added that he would soon join his friend. A month later, Einstein himself died.
The timing of that letter in relation to his death prompted me to wonder: if Einstein had truly succeeded in unlocking time, what would he have done with the discovery?
After reading a great deal about him, I imagined that he would probably have hidden the theory away. Einstein spoke out more than once against the uses humanity had made of his theory of relativity, and repeatedly expressed regret over the letter he had written to the then President of the United States, Roosevelt. That letter led to the Manhattan Project, the project to develop the atomic bomb, which led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
From there, my imagination took flight, and Time Tourists began to come alive.
Time Tourists is a speculative thriller inspired by real historical events.
The book is available from bookshops throughout Israel, the Yedioth Books website, and e-vrit, in print, ebook, and audiobook editions.