专四专八考试

【单选题】The dream of lost innocence recovered in a golden future always haunts the imagination of colonial pioneers. Its premise is myopia: F. Scott Fitzgerald conjured “a fresh, green breast of the new world" for hisDutch sailors, a story that began without Indians. Golda Meir infamously insisted that there was no such thing as Palestinians.Breaking new ground on a distant shore is easier if no one is there when you arrive. PlanB、allows that the natives are happy to see the newcomers.But soon enough it all turns nasty and ends in tears.
"A、StrangeDeath," Hillel Halkin’s beautifully written and wisely confused account of the local history of the town he lives in, Zichron Yaakov, takes us back to the earliest days of Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine. His ostensible subjects are members of the Nili spy ring operated out of Zichron daring World War Ⅰ by local pioneers on behalf of theBritish, its ramifications among the local populace and the betrayals and revenge that floated in its wake. He is deeply seduced, however, by the lovely ambiguities of the past as they arise in relationships betweenArabs and Jews at a time when both groups were under Turkish rule. Yes, there is murder just around the corner (Jews were hacked to pieces in Hebron andArabs massacred inDeir Yessin) but in 1916 a man could still be known by the horse he rode from village to village rather than the tank he roiled through in.
The spy ring ("Nili" is a Hebrew acronym that translates as "the strength of Israel will not lie"), which functioned less than a year from the winter of 1916 through the fail of 1917, was the brainchild ofAaronAaronsohn andAvshalom Feinberg, two Palestine-born Zionists convinced that aBritish victory over the Turks would help pave the way to a Jewish state.Aaronsohn was a charismatic figure with an international reputation as a botanist (he discovered triticum dioccoides, the wild ancestor of cultivated wheat). Feinberg, a local farmer, was a swashbuckler, a superior shot and impressive horseman.Aaronsohn brought two of his sisters into the ring: Rivka, who was engaged to Feinberg, and the beautiful and spirited Sarah.At 24, Sarah had abandoned her Turkish Jewish husband inConstantinople and had witnessed, on her journey to Palestine, the Turks’ genocidal assault on theArmenians. The network was augmented by Yosef Lishansky, a maverick adventurer and a tough guy, and a few more trusted relatives of the two leaders.
The likelihood of the spies living to comb gray hair wasn’t enhanced by the anxieties of some Jews.After a successful run passing information on Turkish troop positions to aBritish freighter waiting offshore came the inevitable capture, torture and interrogation of an operative, NaamanBelkind, and soon enough the jig was up. In October 1917, the Turks cordoned off Zichron.Aaronsohn was luckily inCairo at the time. Lishansky escaped only to be caught after three weeks, and hanged by the Turks. Sarah was captured and marched through town. Four Jewish women abused, excoriated and perhaps assaulted her, but whether they acted out of animosity or an instinct for self-preservation has never been clear.After being tortured by Turkish soldiers Sarah escaped to her own home long enough to retrieve a hidden gun and shoot herself.
Nothing is at it was, and perhaps it never was as Halkin supposeD、In an empty house he finds a discarded, anonymous book, "Sarah, Flame of the Nili."A、little research reveals that the hagiography was written byAlexanderAaronsohn, Sarah’s younger brother, who, Halkin also finds out, had a penchant for pubescent girls well beyond his own adolescence. The countryside was thinly populated and the grass grew high; there are secrets in Zichron.At the end of the book, the town has health food stores, gift and antique shops and ice cream parlors.But it has lost its soul.
A、riot of names in "A、StrangeDeath" sometimes threatens to overwhelm the reader -- a
网考网参考答案：C
网考网解析：
文章的最后一段提到“A riot of names in‘A Strange Death’sometimes threatens to overwhelm the reader”，由此可见本书困扰读者的一长串难记又容易混淆的名字。 document.getElementById("warp").style.display="none"; document.getElementById("content").style.display="block"; 查看试题解析出处>>