A new anthology of short stories and poetry (and a comic strip, too) is about to challenge Israeli readers, Jewish and Arab alike. The book, titled “Two: A Bilingual Anthology,” collects the writings of young Israeli authors, both Jewish and Arab, presenting each text in both Hebrew and Arabic.

“The very fact that you are holding a book and reading it in Hebrew, with a text in Arabic script on the facing page, or vice versa, is a very powerful experience. Even if you don’t read Arabic, when reading this book you can no longer remain oblivious to the fact that this is a place where people live and create in two languages,” said Anat Niv, editor-in-chief of the Keter Books publishing house, which released the book.

The project, which includes a website intended to produce similar collaborations in the future, was coordinated by three editors: Tamer Massalha, Tamar Weiss-Gabbay and Almog Behar. Work on the book began in 2008, and it includes some of the country’s up and coming young authors, such as Anat Einhar, Dror Burstein and Einat Yakir in Hebrew, and Marwan Makhoul and Iyad Barghouti in Arabic.

From the moment it was conceived, this book was never intended to be light reading for the average Israeli, living in a country where poetry collections are hardly best sellers. Besides the unprecedented use of the country’s two official languages, Hebrew and Arabic, on facing pages, the book also challenges its readers with stories of a young Arab woman who misses her beloved after his suicide attack, or of an angry ghost in Haifa, raging about the “crimes of 1948,” while recalling the names of the city’s Arab streets.