SOURCE: Halkin, Hillel. “The Jerusalem Syndrome.” New Republic 218, no. 21 (25 May 1998): 29-32.

In the following review, Halkin criticizes Stone's superficial understanding of Israel and Jewish religious nationalism in Damascus Gate.

Robert Stone is a first-rate writer of fiction. He may not have a voice that is unique, but the voice that he does have, while shared with others of his times, has been burnished to a fine tone: spare, tough, sharply observant, capable of genuine lyricism and tenderness. He is a man who has read widely and he cares deeply about his craft; and when one catches traces in his writing of the great originals—an undertone of Hemingway, an occasional riff of Conrad or of Joyce—these are always perfectly modulated. The more is the pity, then, that Stone's new novel [Damascus Gate], written with his usual skill, is really a rip-off of a country and a tradition...