Spies of No Country: Israel’s Secret Agents at the Birth of the Mossad by Matti Friedman is a riveting spy adventure story – except it’s all true and it’s all stories from first-person interviews and archive records that have never been shared.

If learning about the Mossad, or Israel’s beginnings, or even how words like “chalas” and “ya’ani” became part of the spoken Hebrew language is interesting to you, this book is a gem. Like Harry Potter traveling with Dumbledore to the past, Matti Friedman recreates the scenes of the day through notes and maps and a vivid attention to detail to literally bring you onto the streets and into the minds of Israel’s first spies, before the Mossad was even an idea. This book also provides a seeing-glass into Israel’s current problems and their origins. Reading this book will bring you a new perspective on the country.

With no playbook or predecessors to guide the way, Matti Friedmann shows us how four people and their unit played monumental roles in the creation of Israel. He unfolds the story by taking us into the people as human beings, so in a very real way we become part of Israel’s history. He also shares the many incredible and devastating actions carried out so that Israel could exist today.

How did a country surrounded by enemies, who were far greater and far more experienced than her, survive and thrive? And where did the problems within that country that now scream at the forefront of the political scene emerge from? Matti Friedmann addresses all of this in a well-written page-turner that I highly recommend! I have read lots of Mossad books and watched a lot of documentaries on the subject and all of the information in this book was new, interesting, and extremely important in understanding the foundations of Israel today.