Published by Soncata Press
Twenty-two stories. One delightfully imperfect world.
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Meet the Israelis You Never See on the News
Most people know Israel through headlines. In Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem, Tal Shalev invites readers to discover it through stories.
Set in Jerusalem and across Israel, these twenty-two stories introduce unforgettable characters navigating friendship, marriage, family, love, loss, and the quiet absurdities of everyday life. A wedding guest wrestles with an impossible social dilemma. A husband struggles to save his marriage. Neighbors misunderstand one another. Parents and children search for common ground. Through humor, compassion, and keen observation, Shalev captures the moments that reveal who we are—not only as Israelis, but as human beings.
Written with warmth, wit, and emotional honesty, these stories offer a portrait of Israel rarely seen by the outside world. Beyond the headlines are ordinary people confronting extraordinary choices, finding grace in unexpected places, and discovering that life’s deepest truths often arrive disguised as its smallest moments.
Funny, wise, and deeply humane, Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem is perfect for readers who enjoy literary fiction that celebrates the complexity, resilience, and quiet beauty of everyday life.
Read “The Night Shift” — A Free Unpublished Story
Join Tal Shalev’s occasional reader list and receive The Night Shift, an unpublished story. A police ride-along meant to settle a career crossroads: when are you too old to change your life — and when have you already chosen not to?
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Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem
Twenty-two stories. One delightfully imperfect world.
We're racing to bring these stories to you.
RELEASE DATE: November 1, 2026
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Available a ebook, audiobook, paperback, and hardback
ABOUT TAL SHALEV
Tal Shalev is an American-Israeli writer based in Jerusalem. After making Aliyah, he spent decades as a journalist, writer, and photographer, documenting Israel’s architecture, landscapes, and everyday life for Israeli and international publications. Earlier in his career, he worked in American television, writing and producing documentary and cultural programming.
His journalism taught him to look beyond the headlines and discover the extraordinary in ordinary lives—a perspective that informs his fiction.
Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem is his debut work of fiction, a collection of twenty-two stories that celebrates the humor, humanity, heartbreak, and resilience of everyday life in Israel.
Start with One Story
Receive The Night Shift, a free unpublished short story by Tal Shalev, plus the audio version when available.
PRAISE FOR ALMOST TRUE
With the keen eye of a seasoned observer and the authentic perspective of one who has lived the Israeli experience, Tal Shalev's stories remind us that words, like a great photograph, can reveal an entire world in a single, unforgettable moment.
- Samuel Heilman, author of The Rebbe, winner of a National Jewish Book Award.
If you’ve spent any time in Israel, you’ll recognize so many of the marvelous characters in Tal Shalev’s wonderful stories. And if you haven’t, you’ll be delighted to meet such honest and authentic people, each with a worthwhile story to share
- Fran Kritz, Contributing Reporter, NPR
Tal Shalev writes about Israeli life the way the best short fiction writers write about anywhere; from the inside out, with dark humor and devastating precision. These twenty-two stories find the universal hiding in the deeply particular, and they announce a writer of uncommon gifts
—Tova Herzl, commentator and author of Madam Ambassador
Tal Shalev has a photographer’s eye, an anthropologist’s ear, a psychologist’s insight, and a historian’s sense of irony. In these stories, he captures the ethnic, religious, and political mosaic of Israeli life with remarkable economy and precision. By turns funny, moving, and unsettling, they leave the reader smiling, grieving, and thinking
—Jerry Z. Muller, historian, author, Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes
Tal Shalev's heartfelt stories relate the complex multiplicity and sometimes zaniness of Israel in our current time. You'll meet members of a struggling kibbutz; former Tel Aviv tent protesters now comfortably ensconced in the systems they had been protesting; a wedding party in which both bride and groom are secretly taking Ozempic; a Druze couple haunted by secrets; a secular Jew who feels compelled to say Kaddish for eleven months after his father dies; a Bedouin teenager, and many other characters. These are people who remain after the dream has left or changed; nudged forward by a need for meaning and connection.
—Marcela Sulak, author of The Fault & City of Sky Papers
The wonderful short stories of Tal Shalev capture big and small moments of life in Jerusalem. Full of humor, wisdom of the heart, and compassion, they reveal the human heart of men and women, young and old, Jews and non-Jews, in times of peace and war. They paint a rare portrait of an ancient and disputed city, seen through the precious life of its inhabitants. A portrait seldom told.
—Michal Govrin, author of The Name and Mother's Silence.
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Stories of ordinary people that remind us how much we all have in common.
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